Half-In, Half-Out
by Ihsan997
Summary: A brash young man, more foolhardy than wise, joins a mercenary band hired to hunt down a local bandit lord. Rejecting the advice of those closest to him, he stumbles through life, learning one mistake at a time. 17 chapters. M troll/nelf hybrid x F troll
1. Pilgrim

**A/N: hello readers! Welcome to the first chapter of the first volume of a three volume saga known as 'Taming the Beast,' the ballad of a half night elf, half jungle troll from Ratchet learning about life and the world one mistake at a time. All three volumes have been finished for almost a year and have been sitting on my hard drive, external hard drive and online file storage (I'm paranoid about losing my work, lol) waiting to be edited and posted.**

Her room was dark. It was well lit, but dark. It was also musty. Air circulation was fine, but it was musty. She had decorated her personal living quarters in pastels and even neons in some places. Yet the whole environment was drab. New furniture that seemed weathered by something other than the elements crowded the tiny apartment, covered in tarps to keep it clean for guests that would never come. Walls bearing no ornament nor paintings squared it all in, creating a prison with an easily accessible, unlocked door.

It was by the window she stood, a window letting in light that illuminated nothing. Arms folded, eyes downcast, back turned, she waited until she could be alone again. Just waited until there was nothing left to wait for. Her vibrant, full, freshly washed head of dark brown hair had been combed strategically to hide her face. She was outgoing. She loved to be around people. Yet at that moment, he could tell that she wanted nothing more than to be around no one.

He watched her adept's off-duty robes as she stood, refusing to look at him. So still had she held that he couldn't even see if she had stopped breathing or not as she stood, waiting for his exit. Stiff in posture, a stranger entering her room may have thought her part of the furniture until they walked close to her, finding themselves startled to a jump upon realization that a person had been there the whole time. She leaned against the wall, reluding to react.

She was the closest being of her kind to have been compatible with him, he forced himself to think. Rationalizing it into an equation of traits and qualities and matchmaking took the emotional sting out of her refusal to look at him. Everything was supposed to have worked out. They were right for each other. Or so they thought.

Pushing through an ocean of tension, he waded across her room to reach her, feeling her grow ever more stiff at each footstep he took. He felt like the ceiling would collapse if he pushed further, and yet he did, navigating a maze of tightly packed furniture as he tried to reach her. By the time he did, she had become a statue, unmoving and unfeeling. His large, violet-blue hand reached around to hold hers - tanned, olive colored - as gently as he could. Despite her stiffness, she didn't resist or even react. He felt the coldness of her body radiating through her robes, chilling his chest as he hunched over her shoulder, forced to stoop due to her human-sized quarters. He leaned his elbow up where the wall met the ceiling to relieve some of the strain of leaning close without invading her space, taking care so that his relatively short tusks didn't catch on those silky strands of hair. There was no reason to provoke her further.

Try as he might with those glowing silver eyes of his, he failed to pierce into her two dark browns - irises the color of her hair. Her gaze was unshakeably fixated on the countertop in front of her, refusing to look at anything else. Even beneath his thick, strong palms, the top of her hand barely even held a pulse, as if she had somehow slowed down her own system in the process of giving him the cold shoulder.

Finding no more reason to drag, things out, he spoke without expecting a reaction. He didn't know why. But it felt wrong not to say anything, no matter how useless words would be.

"Some time apart...might do us some good," he whispered softly into her ear, garnering no reaction at all. It was as if she'd become immune to him. "I'll come back."

He stepped back without hesitation, seeing no reason to linger and beg for a response. It was unbefitting and she knew it. He navigated again through the sea of covered furniture, making his way toward the door. Even though he didn't look back, he knew she didn't either. He didn't even need to turn around to know that.

Not wanting to be immature about it, he closed the door as silently as he had opened it. Since she hadn't even turned around, she likely wouldn't know he had left until a few minutes later. She never was that perceptive, on any level.

Maybe she would perceive one day. But as he walked down the hall and out of the women's quarters, he knew that day wouldn't be today.

* * *

The Argent Crusade knew how to plan and staff a proper base. He had to give them that.

He felt it as he exited the two story building that housed permanently stationed female troops and negotiated his way between the barracks for temporary troops on rotation. Even the grass was well kept, despite the numerous horseback riders and pulled carts that tended to roll through. Everyone had something to do and somewhere to go save himself, and by the time he reached the cobblestone main road leading south, he was once again pleasantly taken aback by the tendency of everyone to hang to the right side of the road and walk single file unless they were in a hurry. Sharing not a word with the people he passed, he strolled down road toward the camp's exit, slinging one of his two travel bags over his shoulder. The other was safe and sound next to his bat outside the main gates. In a place like this, one never need worry about theft.

Out in the midst of the Plaguelands, the place had become a haven for adventurers of most races and factions to contribute what they could to controlling the ever present threat of the Scourge. The Scourge had been around for far longer than he had even been alive, his parents told him. Even when their leader had been destroyed decades ago - some corrupt human former nobleman - they trudged on, always looming, ever present. But as the somber, violet-blue man covered in leather and chainmail observed all the new recruits and old veterans taking part in war games and supplies hoarding, he knew he had done his part to help these people help the world. He had never accepted offers to join. In fact, he found the presence of a handful of pureblooded Kaldorei men to be a bit strange considering the vows they'd have to take. But he'd participated in a few of their campaigns and would always have that to feel proud of.

The crowds of troops and even larger crowds of civilian service workers and laborers were so diverse that nobody stared or even took second notice of him. It was like being back home, where everybody was just a little weird themselves, and thus nobody was weird. Truth be told, he knew he was one of the most normal people out there: well adjusted, level headed and objective. That wasn't arrogance; that was confidence, he repeated to himself. And as he lifted his elbows to avoid knocking over a gaggle of giggling gnolls that swept just a little too closely to him, he felt a small twinge of sorrow that he'd be leaving.

As he passed the shops of the craftspeople and the stations for food and drink, he reveled in the fact that there were no hawkers hawking or gawkers gawking. That was a far cry from many other cities in the Eastern Kingdoms. Decades after the factional wars had ended, many people were still unused to seeing members of other races and tended to stare. He had zero social awkwardness about him, but he did have a temper similar to his youngest brother that often filled him with the desire to knock the block off of all the pinkskins and their tendency to find anyone even remotely different to be some kind of oddity. None of that happened at this military base, though. It was a peaceful place overall, and had been a fine temporary home after his guild had broken up. A temporary home. That was the operative term.

The camp was so organized and uniform that it was nondescript. Even though he could never get lost, he soon lost track of which street he was on as he was leaving. Knowing it might be his last day visiting there, he found it difficult to focus on the road ahead of him and avoid becoming lost in thought.

Three gnomes ran in between his legs as he passed the houses of the militia members, the non-elite force that always kept their homes by every entrance of the place, ready to defend at a minute's notice. A certain household of Gilnean Rangers were closed to the impossibly thick stone walls marking the end of the camp, and the young man knew he'd have to break out of his post split melancholy to put up his front.

"Welcome to Hearthglen, Hearthglen!" the lame worgen leader of the rifle squad among the militia joked heartily. It was a play on words - his family name, neither elven nor trollish, happened to be the same as the name of the human founded base camp.

Forcing himself to laugh at the pun he'd heard a hundred times, the man ambled over to the household and leaned up against the porch railing, obliging the permanently injured man. "Any news?" the half blooded traveler asked to be polite, not particularly caring either way.

The white-furred worgen's eyes lit up, ever eager to share news with someone who spent significant spans of time outside. "The Forsaken leadership released a statement regarding the latest Scourge attack," the middle aged Gilnean said in a low voice as he leaned forward in his chair. The news he shared was always common knowledge, yet he would always behave as though everything were a secret. "Apparently, they condemn what happened at the Howling Fjord!" The man's tone was derisive, his expression comical.

"They're always ready with their statements and condemnations," the young man sighed, leaning the upper part of his torso against the railing as well. A caravan of silk merchants entered and were immediately mobbed by both shopkeepers and military tabard and battle standard suppliers, and as the cacophony passed by them the younger man had to raise his voice. "It doesn't come off as sincere when Undercity isn't willing to send any troops to help the rest of the civilized world."

"You seem to be using 'civilized' under a very loose definition there," the worgen chuckled, though there was a tone of resentment of crimes long unpunished in his voice.

"Well, you know what I mean. Even if they didn't cause the problems - you know, the Scourge did - they have to understand that people will wonder. Especially that, once they left their original faction, they didn't bother opening embassies anywhere."

The worgen had to lean forward to hear the last part over the shouting of prices in the street, an uncharacteristic scene of disorder in such an orderly place. "Yes, they're nothing like your father's people. Your father is a night elf, was that what you said before?"

"My mother, actually," the young man corrected him. "My father is a jungle troll."

"Right, sorry. So anyway, it's nothing like your mother's people. They left the Alliance, but they put embassies and consulates everywhere. The Forsaken left the Horde, and zip. Nada."

"My family has a close friend who is one of them, you know."

The worgen raised an eyebrow curiously. "Really? What does he make of all this?"

"Oh hell, I couldn't tell you. It's been over three years since the last time I visited home. You know how it is out here. But...well, he's an individual, and obviously since he lives in a port city, he's more open. He doesn't agree with how shifty his people's leadership is acting."

"Well, people are individuals wherever you go. I don't think we could quite have an undead around here," the worgen said as he swept his hands to indicate the entire camp. "But what you see here is surely a sign that people are people wherever you go. Eh, speaking of which, where are you going this time?"

Sensing that the conversation wouldn't drag out like it usually did, the young man walked up a single step on the man's porch so they could hear each other better, knowing he would soon be able to escape. "The coast out on the Hinterlands, actually," he answered as the worgen whistled in awe. "Yes, it's far, I know. One of my parents' old friends accepted a contract to help some villagers out there build a port, you know, to raise their economic situation seeing as how the Hinterlands will need to be tamed."

"Lawless region that is. Maybe getting the people there more connected to the rest of the world would help them to tame the place." The man leaned forward a little, suddenly looking to be a little more discreet. "So Rachel, over in the barracks there...how will she take it? You being gone and so far, I mean?"

He immediately knew what the worgen man meant, and brushed it off just as quickly. "She'll be fine. We're just friends, if that's what you're asking." _Technically not a lie anymore_ , he thought. "I'll see everyone here soon enough. I can't imagine a brief protection contract to last more than a month or two."

Suspicious at first, the worgen eventually seemed to accept his explanation. "If you say so," the man said softly while leaning back in his chair. "Why not keep in touch, if you can. It would be nice to know one of our allies is doing alright out there."

The two of them only exchanged pleasantries for a minute or so before they broke off again, and the violet-blue man was able to finish his exit from the camp. Negotiating his way once more through the throngs of buyers swarming the foreign merchants, he weaved in and out of the crowd until he had passed them, reaching just outside the main gate to find a young runner he'd paid tending to his bat. A common Tirisfal duskbat, the mount was uncommon outside of its home region, and certainly out of place in the Hillsbrad Foothills, where he'd originally found it. The large furry creature looked more like a goofy, bug eyed hand puppet than a sleek mount prepared for aerial combat. It was rare, however, and unquestioningly loyal despite its timid nature.

The teenage human tending to it had already affixed the second back to the back of the bat's trappings by the time the tall biracial man had finished tightening the first bag to his back and running a final check of his equipment. The human ruffled the big bat behind the ears, watching as it lapped insects up off the ground like small pieces of candy.

"Your bat is ready, Navarion!" the cross eyed human teenager beamed while saluting the big violet-blue man. As if to punctuate the overly enthusiastic point, the bat let out what sounded like a chirp in affirmation.

The man donned a pair of riding gloves that had been sitting on a wooden fence post outside the high stone walls as he spoke. "Thanks a lot, guy. It has to be eleven by now. This big fleabag can see at night, but so can other, more awful things flying around these parts." The duskbat twisted its head around, sending ripples across its dark brown fur coat, unaware that it had been referred to despite understanding Common rather well.

"Aw, go easy on him! He's a big sweetheart." This time, the bat did seem to notice it had been spoken of, and ruffled its pug nose at the teenager in an attempt to look cute. "You sure you can make it to Quel'danil Lodge before nightfall?"

"Not quite, assuming the moon rises...er, sun sets around eight in the evening in these parts. I can arrive at the border perhaps two hours after that, if this furball can push it a little. The lodge is just another half hour past the border, and we'll probably have a day or two to rest before moving out with the others."

"Alright then, but go easy on the bat. I don't think he's really the combat type," the teenager said as the tall man ascended the bat's back.

"I'll cut him some slack when he can pull his own weight," the man replied, using slang terms the big bat didn't quite seem to understand. Once he had donned his flying goggles, he reached into his coin purse and overpaid the teenager slightly. "You're a prince and a scholar, like everyone with the Argent Crusade. I look forward to seeing this place again."

"Hearthglen bids you farewell, Hearthglen!" the human teenager joked, and the man once again pretended to laugh.

Treating the bat as gently as he could so as not to frighten it, Navarion Hearthglen gave the command to lift off. After a few awkward gallops, the bat bounded down the hill leading out of the camp and took off, pumping its wings up and down until it could gain altitude and soar. They'd have to cross a lot of undead territory before nightfall.


	2. Delayed Arrival

The Plaguelands had their own category of beauty. Navarion had to admit that, at least.

The long dead land had been taken over by grass of a strange orange hue, while yellowish-green mushrooms dotted the landscape under pine tree forests which had canopies such a dark green that they were almost black. The occasional plague hound would spot him above, soaring at an altitude of at least a hundred feet, and stupidly give chase. It was humorous to watch, similar to the handful of carrion birds that would flap their decayed wings in an attempt to catch a target far too large for them to eat. They would inevitably fall, their bony and sinewy wings made for soaring bout not aggressive flying. The way the mindless undead avians would shatter when they hit the ground gave a small sense of joy. One less minion of the Scourge, he thought to himself.

Scholomance stood off in the distance, situated on an island in a lake that was far larger up close than it had looked on the map. Given that his bat hadn't quite finished the journey yet, Navarion steered it to skirt the outside perimeter of the lakeshore. Catching thermals to glide helped his mount to conserve energy, and as much as he sometimes resented the scaredy bat, he did feel a sense of obligation in terms of keeping it safe and comfortable. It dragged their trip out by a bit, but lonely rides were never a problem for him. At the age of twenty three, he had already seen more than his fair share of adventure - both outside and inside the home. There were plenty of memories to fuel his youthful angst by reliving, going over ever mistake in his head and daydreaming of what he could have done or said differently in retrospect.

His eyes were protected from large gusts of wind by the goggles, though his long ears were somewhat affected by the air as it whipped by. Even at an event pace gliding across the landscape toward the Plaguelands Hinterlands border, the air was loud enough to provide a welcome distraction as he flew.

He could almost remember the sound of the wind during his days flying alongside his family back at the Barrens. His home region.

He'd often rent one of the local wind riders for the evening, relishing in gaining experience with as many different varieties of mounts as possible, in line with his philosophy on life. His father, ever the jungle troll no matter how domesticated he became, favored a sort of pterodactyl thing his mother had bought as an anniversary gift. He and his father would fly side by side, the father always slightly forward despite the son's desire to be able to lead one day. The grasslands of the Barrens held a sort of gold wheatish color like a gilded sea; a less vibrant contrast to the Plaguelands, though not an entirely different shade on the color wheel.

The pine trees grew a little more sparsely near the lakeshore, not too different from the scattered palms of his homeland. It was almost like an enormous, overgrown oasis, the spires of Scholomance off in the distance looking so faint and tiny that they resembled some of the huts of the fishermen living on mud outcroppings and stilt houses of Barrens oases. Although he was too responsible to shut his eyes for long while riding anything - mounts weren't stupid but one could never be too safe - he could narrow them just enough that the area he flew over at that moment almost reminded him of being home.

The wind whipping by his ears felt the same, just like the wind that would carry his father's when the big, pureblooded troll spotted an alluring herb patch that formed their target during most of their forays. The family had the only patch of tillable land on the bluffs overlooking Ratchet, and since that land wasn't unlimited, they'd use their estate only for growing foreign herbs not available in that part of the world. They expended their efforts and space on fireweed and other in demand rarities. For the typical peaceblooms and briarthorns already abundant, it made more economical sense to simply harvest from the wilds.

Focusing, he could almost feel the light impact as one of the Ratchet wind riders landed gracefully on the ground, just behind his father's dinosaur. They had spotted a particularly large patch of peaceblooms that evening, tucked neatly beneat the canopy of a small palm forest near another nameless oasis. Ever watchful, the two mounts lounged around and kept guard, facing opposite directions lest any intruders happen upon them. He could remember watching his father's big, round shoulders rotate as the man held the little flowers so gingerly in his hands before tucking them away into a wicker basket. Khujand of the Darkspear, as some called him, though per the norms of his mother's matriarchal culture, his father had adopted her last name on legal documents, becoming Khujand Hearthglen. From ignoble tribal descent, he was a heavy set fellow, and more like a big teddy bear than a jungle troll when in a good mood. He considered himself fully Darkspear, however, thus rendering Navarion half Darkspear and half Kaldorei. He used to wish he had been as large as his father, though once he ventured out into the world for the first time, he dropped the complex; most of the world's races were far shorter, thus making him a giant among men either way.

It was that evening, the one floating around his head, when he had returned after his first adventure out into the world. It must have been five years ago, it seemed like. The entire family had been upset that he'd left. They were all very tight nit despite their differences, and they were all a bit clingy to their parents. His father's race naturally had short lifespans. His mother's was once immortal, but had lost that blessing before Navarion had even been born. Being from the generations of night elves born millennia before immortality even began, his mother knew many people from her generation who had already died of old age. Both parents likely had a few decades left to live, and that's part of what caused such a scandal when he had left - they wanted to spend every waking day and night they had left before natural death with him and his siblings. It was suffocating.

The silence that ensued as he and his father picked the peaceblooms felt just as suffocating. Only the wind whipping in between the palm trees provided any form of ambient noise as they worked. Tension mounted within Navarion that went unnoticed by his father, only serving to irritate him any more. He felt like he had become a man back then, and hence was entitled to speak his mind about a few things.

But as they worked their path of picking all the way to the shore, he chose an inopportune time and way to speak it.

"You never hit anyone else, dad!" Navarion piped up in a less commanding voice than he had intended.

His big troll of a dad only turned around halfway to listen to him, shooting him a confused expression. "Washyu sayin', boy?" Khujand asked, not quite getting the point.

"You never hit my brothers and sisters," he elaborated, trying to make himself clear in light of his already shot nerves. Just the thought of brining the topic enough caused his arms to shake. "But you used to hit me."

His father gave him a look like he was listening, but didn't think it important. "Ya got inta worse trouble than they did, son," was all his father replied with. That his father just continued picking more flowers only bothered him more.

"But they still got into trouble too! You never hit any of them at all, not even Shari, and she did stuff just as bad as me. But you never hit any of them." Both past and present, his pulse raced in indignation as the resentment he'd stuffed away for years came spilling out.

"Yeah, I hit ya, son. And my daddy hit me. And his daddy hit him. And on it goes all the way back ta tha Gurubashi." His father straighter up a bit and pat him on the head, an attempt at consoling that actually made him even more upset. "But I don't hit ya now, so don't dwell on it."

"You don't understand," he muttered, feeling the burn in this throat as his attempt to express himself felt denied.

His father turned around as if to respond, but was cut off by a screech off in the distance.

Navarion snapped his eyes wide open, feeling as though he'd been awakened from a nap as he returned to the present. The landscape of the Plaguelands gradually disappeared as he crossed the final river at the very south of the region to reach the mountains marking the border with the Hinterlands. Frantic, his duskbat flapped its wings like it had nothing to lose as it remained absolutely silent in a sort of flight response. When the screeches came again, Navarion knew what it was before he even turned around.

Craning his neck around to take a head count, he found three of the gargoyles slightly behind and to the left while two more were below him. Having almost humanoid bodies, the technically undead creatures couldn't muster the speed necessary to actually overtake a proper ridden bat. But as the first sonic shockwave slid by, he remembered that they wouldn't need to catch up if they could knock it out of the sky.

Like all of his siblings, Navarion had been prepared by his parents and extended family extensively for handling himself in such a dangerous world. All the Hearthglen children learned only a small number of spells and abilities rather than an entire roster, but they mastered what they knew; if you're going to do something, then be the best at it, his mother always told him. Navarion's ability was due to a blessing he'd received during a pilgrimage with his mother to the boughs of Teldrassil: immunity to status effects and psychology. He could not be charmed, scared, mind controlled, polymorphed, forced to sleep and a number of other magically induced ailments. The sonic booms created by gargoyles such as those chasing him would have no effect on his ears.

But they would wreak havoc on his heretofore unnamed bat, which relied on echolocation for movement. And the bat, apparently, knew that.

"Screeeeee!" the duskbat screeched hysterically the moment the calls of the gargoyles became audible across the wind.

Flapping its wings so quickly that it actually slowed itself down from the uneven movements, the bat dove toward the banks of the river running southwest from the Scholomance lake. In the open air, it would be an easy target for the gargoyles to hit with their sonic waves. At least on the ground, it could possibly find a place to hide among the mountains marking the border between the Plaguelands and Hinterlands, which were almost in sight. And even though the bat was intelligent enough to realize all this, it wasn't intelligent enough to realize that flying so erratically that it put Navarion in danger would ultimately put itself in danger.

It dove again, almost flying straight toward the ground far below for a few seconds as the gargoyles gave chase.

"Pull up! Up, you idiot!" Navarion shouted, hanging on to the reins for dear life. "Don't angle too much, you'll nosedive!"

In spite of the fact that the bat did understand the concept of nosediving, it ignored his command due to its panicked state. Until then, the five tormentors seemed content to merely chase and wear their target out, and it gave them exactly what it wanted. Navarion could feel his duskbat' back heaving up and down beneath his legs as it hyperventilated. Normally, the giant bats favored as flying mounts by undead and forest trolls alike were just as capable of defending themselves as the gargoyles they almost resembled in away. True to his own bat's cowardly nature, however, it became totally useless in a combat situation.

Realizing that it was pointless to try and pick the gargoyles off one by one while in the air, Navarion focused on tugging the reins enough to coax the bat into making a safe landing among the scattered trees below.

"There!" he commanded the bat while leaning forward to point at the tiny woodland near the northwest riverbank. "Land between the trees!"

Just as the bat appeared to be listening to him, the surprisingly smart gargoyles began their attack. The first sonic boom whizzed by, literally visible in the dying light of dusk as it broke through the air. Ripples colored the lightest of blue flew by, tearing through the air like the wake of a stone skipped across the surface of a small pond. Navarion heard it, but his immunity prevented it from causing his ears any discomfort at all. But the duskbat panicked even more, and zig zagged a path as it descended toward the ground, forcing Navarion to hunch over and hold on with all four limbs.

The screeches of the gargoyles grew louder as they approached. His bat flew so erratically that their sonic booms had no chance of connecting, simply scaring the bat and keeping it in an uncontrollable state instead. Up became down and down became up as Navarion tried to gain his bearings. Wrapping the reins around one fist, he grabbed the fur on the duskbat's head and forced it to look at the rapidly approaching patch of trees. They couldn't be more than ten yards from the ground at that point, and the mount would need to get its bearings to brace for impact. For a split second, the bat nosedove again and almost flung Navarion right off its back, causing his teeth to clatter as he yanked to keep himself atop. One of the bigger pine trees spun into his view out of nowhere due to his bat's zig zagging, and at the last possible moment he yanked the bat's head to the right by the fur, forcing it to veer off course and toward the dirt. One of the gargoyles hit a tree branch and screamed just as the bat regained its senses and held its wings out wide to slow itself down.

But it didn't land. Instead, it skimmed over the top of the ground, likely knowing that landing at the speed it maintained even after slowing itself a bit would cause injury. Navarion didn't know that, however, and when he leaned his weight forward in anticipation of dismounting and turning to face the gargoyles in one movement, his body shot forward faster than he could realize what had happened.

"Argh!" he groaned as he back flipped in midair without any surface to push off of, thanks to the spry movements from his father's side of the gene pool.

His feet landed forward as he spun, hitting the dirt and catching on rocks as he landed hard and fast, tumbling over an earthen embankment formed by a collapsed tree. He felt the pain the most in his feet and, somehow, his tailbone as he ended up staying stiff to avoid hitting yet another tree. His knees buckled out to avoid taking any more damage, but he felt the pain in his shins and thighs as well, and he crumpled in a heap when he felt a tiny pull in the muscles of his lower back. He barely had time to register his bat whizzing by to hide behind him and the impact crater in the dirt his feet had created before he heard the gargoyles right on top of him.

"Scree!" his bat screeched at him pathetically as it looked at him with gigantic, fear stricken eyes.

Spitting, gritting his teeth and forcing himself to his feet despite the pain throughout his lower body, Navarion stepped forward and flexed his right hand before shutting it forcefully. The metal gauntlet-bracer combination he wore on his right arm from hand to elbow clanked as a long, curved sickle blade sprang forward almost an equal length. Three of the gargoyles landed and the one that had hit the tree branch limped toward him and his bat slowly, thinking their quarry had already been doomed. With screams that would be deafening to anyone else and that caused his bat to almost go into fear-induced seizures, the three uninjured gargoyles all blasted Navarion, hitting him with a series of sonic booms created by their vile, unnatural vocal chords in a mockery of the echolocation used by natural bats. And when their sound wave attacks had absolutely no effect on him, they stupidly continued hitting him with even more sonic booms at an even faster rate.

Reaching behind him, he pulled his ward from his back. The shaman of the orcs, Tauren and draenei called them totems, but his was based on the voodoo culture of his father's race; he knew a ward when he saw one, damnit. Tossing the fel fetish forward, he watched as the short wooden pole bearing a cursed turtle shell on it almost sentiently imbedded itself in the ground in the center of the three gargoyles. A flash of red, electricity-like bolts later and the entire ground beneath them had lit up in fel runes. The three assailants were pulled to the ground by an invisible force, moving so slowly as they tried in vain to crawl forward that they may as well have been holding still. The stasis trap was his only ward; again, if you're going to do something, do it well, he thought.

Before Navarion could even look for the fifth assailant, sharp talons gripped both of his upper arms like a vice. The chainmail was pressed into the leather underneath, scraping his hide but failing to cut open a wound. A few flaps of its wings later and the final uninjured gargoyle had pulled him up into the air.

He could see the gargoyle that had hit the tree branch limping forward toward his bat below. Given how injured the gargoyle was, his bat could easily have escaped had it the brains to do so. Instead, it ran from its tormentor in circles around a tree, turning direction each time another sonic wave ripped through the air next to it. He'd be stranded if he couldn't save it, stuck in the Plaguelands dozens of miles from Quel'Danil Lodge with no means of transport. Plus, as much as it begrudged him to admit, the dumb duskbat had grown on him; he'd feel like garbage were he to fail to protect it.

His captor struggled with his weight, failing to ascend even to the canopy. Despite being lean of build, Navarion was a good deal larger than the gargoyle, but it had executed a perfect catch. Its grip was strong, and its legs splayed apart to keep his arms immobile. Pulling a trick from the manual of fighting dirty, he leaned his head to the side as far as he could, let his arm go limp to drag the gargoyle down on one side, and gored it through the ankle with his tusks.

"SCCCRRRRRRR!" the undead creature screamed as Navarion thrashed his head back, tearing the gargoyle's Achilles' tendon right out of its ankle. Smelly blood splattered across his face and he only shut his eyes in the nick of time.

Tumbling to the ground, the creature fought to maintain its balance as it involuntarily fell. It released Navarion's other arm to drop some weight, but he anticipated its move and swung upward at the leg of its unharmed (and potentially still dangerous) leg. His sickle embedded itself down to the bone, dragging them both down rapidly but providing some resistance as they fell at a slow, awkward speed. The meat of its other foot lied in ribbons, though it still tried to claw at him ineffectively using its torn, bleeding talons. By the time they hit the ground, the gargoyle's desperate flapping had at least prevented them from landing full force, but Navarion's already sore feet and lower back were jarred once more regardless.

The gargoyle hit the ground much harder, lacking the manual dexterity on the ground that it had when in the air. For good measure, he tore as much of the flesh of its thigh as he could when pulling his sickle out of its leg, and left it immobilized as he turned to see his bat once again running past him to hide. The gargoyle that had hit the tree branch was limping; so was he, and they were likely experiencing the same amount of pain from their respective falls and impacts. Tiring of the game, aching from his injuries and enraged that these monsters had tried so hard to take his and his mount's lives, Navarion forewent melee combat when he was already hurting and pulled the already loaded pistol from his belt.

"Let's see you dodge this when you aren't flying," he growled at the dumb undead animal, which didn't seem to recognize the smell of gunpowder.

He squeezed the trigger, and the blast caused some of the black power to ignite midair as the gargoyle's cranium was blasted to bits. It hit the ground fast, splattering brain matter across the ground as it twitched for a few moments before going limp. Shooting things in the face was always more fun than proper combat, his godmother Irien had told him, but in combat situations like these there simply wasn't enough time to reload the gunpowder, pack it down, and then reload the bullets or musket balls one had brought; handguns still weren't as efficient as rifles. Not wanting to give any of them a chance to recover, he jumped back to the gargoyle that had tried to fly off with him, its legs bleeding out all over the ground. His anger seething and his remorse nonexistent, he waited for it to turn and look him in the eye before he disembowled it and left it to die slowly. The Scourge deserved no mercy, he thought to himself as he walked away to find his stasis trap still active.

At the sight of him, the three creatures that were still struggling to even lift their heads froze. The undead couldn't technically experience fear, but their sense of self preservation was obviously threatened. They reverted to their stone forms quickly, thinking they could protect themselves that way.

"Trying to hide, I see," he sneered while gripping the back of his curved blade so it retracted back into the metal wiring over the top of his bracer. Reaching back into his backpack, he pulled out a small hammer and metal wedge. They were technically camping tools, but they would do the job in this case. He stepped forward to the creatures that had tried to kill him menacingly, kneeling down so their stone but still sentient eyes could get a good look at him. "I haven't practiced sculpting in a long time."

* * *

Carrion grub infested gargoyle body parts and chunks of once living stone littered the area just a few yards away from the alcove where they had made camp. The little cave was high enough that the bat had had to fly them up there. There weren't any plague hounds or other predators for miles - Navarion's voodoo allowed him to faintly detect both life and death wherever he went - but he didn't want to take any chances while sleeping. Using his heal spell on his back and legs had taken up most of his mana; to properly heal was a laborious process requiring multiple stages rather than one short, I'll used burst. He had spent the time in between healing sessions resting to recover what little energy he could and examining the map, wondering how he had estimated the amount of time it would take to reach Quel'Danil by so many hours. He'd spent more than half a day before the gargoyles had caught up to them, and they were only three quarters of the way there.

He must have nodded off at some point, as he could tell that dawn was approaching by the time his duskbat woke up and greeted him in a way only the bug eyed, cowardly yet unquestionably loyal mount could.

::SLURP::

"Ack! I'm drowning! Mom, Shari woke me with a water balloon aga...what?"

A pug nose, two comically oversized concave ears and a moron's grin hovered about a foot away from his face as he searched for his handkerchief to wipe off the bat drool.

"I hate you," Navarion grumbled as he sat up and searched for his gnomish engineered miniature clock he always brought with him on trips, along with the obligatory compass, sextant and other navigation tools. "Shit, the moon will set in less than two hours. Let me see the map."

Although it didn't seem to understand the word 'hate,' the word 'map' was familiar to it, and the duskbat quickly snatched up the parchment from the cave floor using its hooked thumb. Sliding it away carefully to avoid tearing it, Navarion looked at the rest of the route to the lodge and estimated their travel time based on how long it had taken them to get that far.

"We can arrive once the sun is out, and the rest of the cartel's caravan will have been waiting for us since...you let me sleep for six hours? Are you serious?" he asked the clueless bat as it wagged its gigantic behind side to side. Forcing himself to stand, Navarion tested out his ankles, heels and lower back, finding that the healing, excess sleep and then it of regeneration he'd inherited from his father had him feeling more or less like brand new. "You wouldn't have known it would have helped, either just a giant black cottonball with wings."

The duskbat wagged itself even more excitedly. Supposedly, these mounts were supposed to understand Common as well as the gryphons favored by the Alliance, but the bat never seemed to understand any of the insults he threw its way. It was twice his size, he thought to himself, and literally did nothing to help during the fight with the gargoyles.

"Most flying mounts double as combat pets," he scolded to no effect. "Your a big furball of a scaredy bat is what you are. In fact, I've decided to finally name you. May you always be know as Furball."

"Scree!" the duskbat yelped happily, bucking its head up as though it was acknowledging its own christening.

"Fur-ball. That's exactly what you are."

His derisive stare did nothing to make the duskbat feel guilty for its cowardice. A part of Navarion deep down told him it had never been raised as a combat pet and any amount of battle experience did him good. He had come out alright in the end, after all, had kept all his belongings save a single bullet, and even felt better after having rested. But still, there was something about the cheery, affectionate duskbat that irritated him even when he was the object of its affection.

He finished packing up and stretching, stroking his impossibly long, braided indigo goatee as he looked out the cave mouth to the mountains chain that blurred the boundary between the southeastern Plaguelands and northwestern Hinterlands. A swell of pride at having made it that far on his own, without family help, filled his chest as he took a moment to take in the scene. The mountains were drab, lifeless and ugly, totally unpleasant to look at anyway. But he had gotten there on his own.

"Furball, get over he - hey!" Navarion's command was interrupted by the bat's immediate response to its new name. The furry creature ambled up so quickly with its gibbon like gait that it bumped into him, almost knocking him off the edge.

Rider and mount shared looks of resentment and idiotic glee respectively as they stared at each other for a moment. When that moment passed, he sighed heavily and climbed up on its back, taking the reins once more.

"Come on, Furball. Vegnus and Hogar are likely waiting for us at the lodge. Let's not leave anyone to think we absconded again."


	3. Familiar Faces

The moment Navarion flew over the beginning of the rocky rolling plains and green valleys of the Hinterlands, he felt a wave of relief wash over him. Physically, he had already rested up in a cave back in the Plaguelands. Mentally, however, he was a great big ball of confusion that even the beyond gorgeous landscape below him couldn't unravel.

Seeing as how the moon had already set and daylight had broken out, there was no longer any reason for him to push Furball too hard. Vegnus, a close family friend as well as his direct superior for the mission he had accepted, would have arrived at Quel'Danil lodge yesterday afternoon with the rest of the Steamwheedle Cartel caravan and would likely not be leaving until tomorrow, if by then. Relaxing a bit, Navarion leaned back and allowed his duskbat to soar on the high winds above the plains, conserving energy and finally calming down. The furball known as Furball was much more serene and manageable once outside of the undead lands that were technically its home. Even forgetting his usual irritation that rose whenever he was in the duskbat's presence, Navarion even ruffled Furball's fur between the ears, gazing out over the landscape.

Lordaeron had no connection to him in terms of personal or familial history. His mother's people were natives of northern Kalimdor, his father's of the far southern cone of the Eastern Kingdoms. These lands were totally different, but he felt at peace soaring overhead nonetheless. For the first time in a long time, he was able to think.

It had been two years since he absconded from his second contract with the cartel. After running away from home and spending a year working security on goblin passenger and cargo ships - a job which his mother herself performed for a five year period before meeting his father, as he always remembered when trying to justify having left home - he bailed. The work was monotonous, the few skirmishes he fought with pirates neither challenging nor satisfying, and the lifestyle unpleasant. Even if Navarion had become known as something of a ladies man among his extended family, they were still all either elves or half elves (his big troll of a dad had no living family members to keep in contact with). Restraint was the norm, and when he saw the lascivious lifestyle of the goblin, human and dwarven sailors, Navarion wanted nothing to do with it. He loved women and had been with far more than was typical for the rather reserved night elves, but the idea of literally going through a different woman every single night bothered what little moral fibre he hadn't drunk away. To even consider paying for love, as many of his shipmates did by the hour, made him want to vomit.

And so he left. If he focused his eyes on the morning sun peeking over the mountainous landscape on the horizon, he could almost pretend that he was in Stormwind once more rather than in the Hinterlands. The overcrowded, crime ridden Alliance capitol gave him his first glimpse of what real poverty was like, as well as his first experience with racism. After getting over his typical temperamental reactions, he eventually valued the experiences as a taste of the real world his parents had worked so hard to shelter him from. It was also there that he met a recruiter for the Argent Crusade, who just so happened to be enlisting help for a campaign against a renewed Scourge invasion of the lands of the blood elves. The Forsaken had taken quite a bit of damage as well, but their isolationism prevented too much international sympathy from forming for them.

Of course, Navarion couldn't have joined the Argent Crusade. Their adherence to the religious beliefs of humans, draenei and the blood elves turned him off too much. He certainly wasn't pious or active in the temple of Elune, despite his mother's increasing religious conservatism as she aged. And like his father, he refused to worship the Loa, viewing them as partners in channeling voodoo magic and nothing more. Regardless of his religious misgivings, however, he greatly valued the time he'd spent with them. He'd gained endless experiences on the battlefield and in life alongside groups and raids of multiracial adventurers looking to find themselves, just as he was trying to do. It was also how he met Rachel.

The wind of the plains whipped through his mane and tickled his long, aquiline nose, but he was flying so high that the wind carried no scents. Without distractions from other odors, it was easier to remember the smell of her perfume the first time they had stayed at the same camp together. Of course they'd seen each other, despite having no interactions. Rachel was the tallest human woman he'd ever met, even moreso than all the Crusade's cavalrywomen. It ran in her whole family, apparently, and although she was still much shorter than him, she was close enough to him for things to - for lack of a better term - work out. It was what had caused any attraction at all to blossom in the first place.

She was stiff, and a bit cold. It was her personality. But perhaps due to the lack of attention she'd received from other guys, Navarion had found it easy to charm her within the first hour of speaking to her while protecting a pilgrim caravan. He didn't find humans particularly attractive, but she was different from all the blue and purple skins and hair colors he had grown up with. To him, she was exotic.

He shook the ideas from his head. Life happened, as one could say, and things fell apart over time. In the strictest sense, he was now single once again. He'd promised to come back after finishing the contract to provide protection for a port under construction on the east coast, and his private life was once again up in the air. Theoretically, it should have made him happy. He had always claimed to thrive off of uncertainty. Well, he had it. And yet he didn't feel thrilled or excited; he felt a little lost.

Emotionally, at least. An informative screech from Furball drew his attention to the just barely visible wooden arches of Sindorei architecture off in the distance.

"We're here," he sighed contentedly as Furball sped up a little in anticipation of rest. "Maybe another fifteen minutes and you get to lie down."

The time passed quickly as the lodge and the surrounding buildings came into view. The central long house was likely a meeting area, following the guidelines of most elven villages. Tents for troops standing under banners for the Alliance dotted the surrounding landscape, and further buildings - also bearing high elven architecture - punctuated the numerous canvas tarps. As far as high elves were from night elves like his mother, it was still a breath of fresh air compared to human settlements, which were usually dirty, poorly planned and full of unkept, uncouth people.

By the time he had come into view of the archers guarding the flight point, he had already been spotted. The factional wars had ended decades ago, but Navarion had already expected the alarm that his sudden appearance caused. Elves were traditional enemies of trolls despite having been descended from them, and his appearance would certainly be unsettling. Giant bats were favored as flying mounts by the trolls in the region, and his tusks and large stature would identify him as someone potentially dangerous. His obvious glowing silver eyes, however, clearly threw them off as the archers looked confused as all hell as he landed.

Furball landed clumsily and proceeded to shake itself off despite not being wet, and Navarion dismounted as nonchalantly as he could so as not to startle either the flight master awkwardly holding his hand out to help remove the saddlebags or the archer clutching his bow as though he didn't know whether or not to notch an arrow.

"Could I see some ID?" the guard asked almost shyly. "And how are you doing?"

Chuckling at the man's insistence on remaining polite even when suspicious, Navarion quickly pulled out his Steamwheedle ID card and submitted it for a quick inspection. "I'm here with the cartel caravan that should have arrived yesterday in the late afternoon."

"Late evening, actually," the flight master chimed in as the guard inspected the card. "They were grumbling about cart problems due to all the construction materials they were hauling."

"Seems I'm not so late, then," Navarion joked, doing his best to ease the tension. The guard inspected him carefully, not so much from disbelief over his identity as curiosity about his roots. "Half Kaldorei, if you were wondering," he said while removing his flying goggles to reveal his glowing silver eyes.

"It's not my place to judge," the guard said in a nonchalant demeanor of his own that was clearly faked.

Accepting his card back from the guard and his bags back from the flight master, he pulled out a few gold coins. "I'm sure you don't see many bats around here, but I was hoping that this overgrown critter would be able to find some space at the roost for some rest and possibly a bath."

"He'll be in good hands, don't worry. My, he's a feisty big fellow, isn't he?" The flight master took Furball by the reins and led him to the dragonhawk roost, displaying no discomfort at all.

"Thanks a lot, mister. His name is Furball and he isn't too bright, so be careful leaving him around lanters, stoves or explosives," Navarion shouted after the nodding flight master as the man and the bat left for the high, cylindrical mount roost. The guard had already sheathed his bow and stood at attention, ever the appearance-concerned elf. "Do you happen to know where the cartel members happen to be right now?"

"Yes. They're at the inn, which is just across from the lodge itself. Go around the storage shed here and make a right." The guard eyed him curiously for another moment before turning and staring at a tree in some sort of subconscious signal that he was no longer interested in speaking to the strange newcomer. Navarion wasted no time leaving, himself interested in finding his supervisor for the contract and learning where he could get a warm meal.

In spite of the odd stares he received from the high elves at the settlement, Navarion couldn't help but admire the quaint village as he made his way to the inn. The high elves had been devastated by decades of war, but at least in one settlement they had preserved their culture. It was easy to identify with; after the loss of immortality and their temporary membership in the Alliance, many night elves lost touch with their culture and were overtaken by the vices of the modern world. His mother's ancestral grove, where she had spent ten thousand years in servitude to nature, had been wrecked socially and environmentally by opening up to the world, so much so that none of his family members ever visited due to the pain of seeing what was once so beautiful end up as an impoverished, faceless ghetto in the woods. Even with the influx of draenei settlers, Quel'Danil looked like a place that held on to its traditions.

Inside the lobby of the long, two story in, he found the motley crew of cartel members he had been searching for, along with a few local guests.

"It's about time ye show up!" shouted a familiar voice from a circle of five people.

Across the cozy lobby with a few scattered chairs and coffee tables between them stood Vegnus, longtime friend of the Hearthglens and bigwig in Steamwheedle's shipping and protection rackets. A tad bit thin for a dwarf and sporting an unusually short beard for their kind, he could almost pass for a shockingly short human rather than a quirky dwarf were it not for his accent. Youthful eyes started up at Navarion despite the three decades of age difference between them, and the two men. Greeted each other with hearty double handed handshakes.

"I'm sorry about that, but I ran into some serious Scourge trouble in the Plaguelands," Navarion explained as they walked back to everyone else.

"Ye have nary a scratch on ye, son. I take it ye arrived, belongings, mount and all?" Vegnus asked as they reached the group, trying unsuccessfully to stop the four others from standing up formally.

"Of course, nothing I couldn't handle. I took out five gargoyles and only used a single bullet."

Vegnus shot him a 'you're so full of shit' look despite the claim technically being true, but let it slide without his normal biting sense of humor. As if realizing he wouldn't be able to prevent the others from a business style round of introductions, Vegnus led Navarion to the draenei, high elf, Orc and naga who delivered him a few mini shocks of recognition.

"Well anyway, I think ye ought te meet some of our fellow contractors set on helping the people of Raventusk. This here is Jalinde Summerdrake. She used te be one of the bigwigs here at Quel'Danil and is taking this as a sort of goodwill mission," Vegnus explained as if it was agonizingly boring.

Navarion scrutinized the petite ranger as he shook her much smaller hand. "A high elf going on a goodwill mission to a village of forest trolls?" he asked incredulously. "The world really has changed."

"From what Vegnus tells me, you're living proof of that," Jalinde joked while motioning to the biracial man's tusks and glowing eyes.

"I guess you could say-"

"And this is Anchorite Traska, one of the factional representatives who once led hostilities against the Raventusk tribe," Vegnus interrupted, trying to move things along. "I'm not sure what on Azeroth an Anchorite does, but I think she's some kind of priestess."

"I'm standing right here, Vegnus," the draenei with foofy hair snarked to no effect. "I'm what you could call combat clergy, here to smite or support wherever needed.

"Glad to have a professional healer with us," Navarion said in relief. "I'm tired of burning my mana out on these trips."

"Consider yourself a reserve healer, then. Glad I won't be entirely alone trying to keep everyone alive!"

"This is Hogar, who I think ye met once," Vegnus said while tapping the buffed out but very kind looking shaven Orc.

"Oh...you served hard time with my dad!" Navarion beamed as memories of his father's prison stories flowed back to him.

Hogar's eyes lit up at the response he had garnered. "Your old man still talks about the old days, I take it?"

"Are you kidding? Come to Ratchet some time, you've become a sort of legend among a lot of us there."

"Now you're just trying to kiss my ass," Hogar chortled along with the others. "But feel free to continue."

"Great mental image, Hogar. And this is Nephentha, who I think you already know," Vegnus droned as he introduced the last of the four adventurers he'd be protecting the caravan and construction workers with, to great surprise on his part.

He shouldn't have been. There were very few naga on the world who weren't murderously hostile to every other race on the planet, so chances are it was who he thought it was were high. Still, seeing the daughter of the only naga family living peacefully in Ratchet - possibly in any large city - caused Navarion to visibly arch his brows as even more memories of his past whizzed in his brain.

"Nephentha...you're doing quests with the cartel?" he stammered as he shook the hand of the naga girl he had once known who had grown into a woman that, in spite of their anatomical differences, could almost be described as attractive. "I would never have expected your mother to let you venture outside!"

She stared at him for a few seconds before answering, and he began to worry that she just might know about his running away from home and absconding from an earlier contract. Vegnus knew, but Vegnus never talked and wouldn't tell Navarion's parents where he was despite being so close to them. But Nephentha, on the other hand, had such a strong poker face that those two slit like, reptilian eyes of hers never betrayed what she was thinking or feeling.

"Parents can be...surprisingly understanding, if one is honest and up front with them," she replied ominously as she stared into his eyes blankly and without discomfort. Thankfully, Vegnus was never one to allow silenced to linger for long, and quickly saved the day.

"Well, yer here, that's what matters the most," the human-like dwarf said while moving chairs aside for the much larger members of the group to get by. "There's only one restaurant in this village, and ye have te order at the longhouse. Why don't we all have a nice brunch now that we're all here and discuss the details of this mission. We can meet my fellow civvies at the caravan later."

Navarion sipped on the herbal tea Vegnus had ordered for them on the second and last morning he'd be staying at the lodge. The high elves grew the stuff locally, and it apparently was one of the lifelines of their traditional community. An apt choice, considering the fact that Vegnus was intent on discussing community economic development or some such rubbish before they set out for the coastline with the caravan.

"Ye mean te tell me that ye accepted this quest and ye don't even know what the job is?" the least gruff dwarf on Azeroth asked in a tone that was stern by his standards.

"Not exactly," Navarion mumbled unhesitatingly. Despite his interlocutor's judgmental and incredulous stare, he felt no shyness for not having learning every last detail of a quest that essentially served as a mere distraction for the young man as he tried to find some semblance of direction in his life. "I mean, obviously I received the cartel missive you sent me."

"The one that had all the details of the job?" Vegnus asked in exasperation.

"Well, look, I didn't read it entirely. I saw the important parts, about protection and construction and killing bandits."

"There wasn't anything in there about killing bandits, ye fool. There was mention that caravana had been raided, but killing may not be necessary."

"I hope it is. I've been itching for more combat experience since the latest Scourge invasion died down. No pun intended." Navarion sipped more tea as they spoke, trying to humor Vegnus' disapproval without crossing the line into becoming patronizing. The man was, after all, a close family friend since before he'd even been born.

"These are people's lives we're talking about," the youthful dwarf said as he shook his head. "Look, yer primarily here for cultural relations and to protect the civilian contract workers while they finish work on the port and its facilities. But if we never see any violence the entire time, it's a good thing."

The first part had piqued his interest, considering how personally it seemed to relate to himself. "Cultural relations?" the half elf, half troll asked, raising his eyebrow curiously.

"Of course. Look, we're going te Raventusk City, ye know that. The factional wars are over, but they're still members of the Horde. Not all of them look on my people or Ranger Summerdrake's positively."

"The Raventusk are forest trolls; my dad is a jungle troll," Navarion countered, skeptical that it would make a difference. "They'd even view my dad as a foreigner the same as you, and he's full blooded."

"At first, laddie, at first. But ye speak Zandali, the language of all the trolls-"

"Most," Navarion corrected the dwarf again. "Large populations of trolls only speak Low Common like you and me are right now."

"Well, look - I don't care about other tribes! We're dealing with the Raventusk here, and they speak Zandali!" For some reason, Vegnus appeared unusually irritable, a total flip from his usual self. "At first, they'll treat ye the same as the rest of us. But once ye talk te them in their own language, show them that a troll could even breed with an elf, they'll warm up to our whole crew."

"They're hiring Steamwheedle to help them build a port, aren't they already warm?"

Calming down at a valid and honest question, Vegnus finally sipped on his own rapidly cooling tea for the first time and relaxed back into his chair. "Ye'd think that, but it's a little complicated. The village elders hired the cartel te help them build a port, a fishery and a shipyard, and they know that we'll leave facilities for workers and material behind once we're gone. Their population is swelling - it used te be called just a village before ye was born - and their elders are smart folks. They know that they can't just survive as isolated hunter gatherers with a population ten thousand and growing."

Navarion whistled at the figure, doing the math in his head. "So if they have a lot of young people, the birth rate will only increase within the next fifteen years."

"Exactly - see, now yer taking an active interest in ye work! That's what I like te hear." Vegnus almost had a twinkle in his eye like the one the perennial bachelor used to get when he and the neighbors in Ratchet were asked to babysit the Hearthglen kids. It was quaint and Navarion tried to pretend he found it smothering, but deep down inside it felt nice to have Vegnus around when there were so few familiar faces in his life anymore. "The elders know the reality, but the problem is - well, ye know ye pa's people. A lot of them only want to follow the old lifestyles, or don't want non-Horde people interacting with their community. So we're not only teaching these people job skills and helping them find opportunity of their own, but we're also opening their minds te the outside world a little."

"And you need someone with a connection to the culture to go along with everybody?"

"Absolutely. We tried shifting labor and getting some trolls transferred from other Steamwheedle work sites, but we aren't allowed to request a transfer based solely on an employee's race - it's discriminatory. Not te mention we're always wary of the Vilebranch tribe - they aren't members of the Horde or anybody other than themselves."

"I thought the Vilebranch ended hostilities with the three major factions over here?" Navarion asked as he finished all his tea and half the biscuits he had only noticed a moment before.

"Verbally, but nothing is written," Vegnus explained while gulping his tea down like a shot glass. "That's what makes everybody nervous. Membership in the Horde has helped civilize the Raventusk. Not as much as the Darkspear, but a bit. The Vilebranch still hold on te cannibalism and live sacrifice. They say they only take the local bandits - which is sort of a good thing, in a macabre way - but it makes everyone uneasy."

"So if we're attacked by a crazed band of berserk cannibals, my job is to negotiate our way out of being sacrificed to their great thunderbird or whatever nonsense they believe in?" Navarion chortled.

"Look, nothing like that has happened. There have just been some tense encounters out on the highways, on hunting grounds, as riverbeds. Ye presence can help more than ye think."

"Hopefully we'll only have to play that card among the Raventusk themselves." Setting hit teacup on the table and lying back, Navarion tried to take all the information in. "So these bandit bands - how much of a threat could they really be to a bunch of only partially civilized forest trolls?"

Vegnus took his time eating the rest of the biscuits, seeming to savor every bite in a way that was out of step with his relatively lean (by the standards of dwarves) build. "Not a threat te their lives, no. But a huge threat te their livelihoods. Ye know what ye pa's people are like. They're as smart as any other race, but they aren't too educated or technologically advanced. They tried building a fishery on their own te feed all the youngguns they got, but thieves in the hills kept finding ways te put out the torches used te light the city at night, create noise diversions and run off with all the construction material and even the boats in the middle of the night. The tribal elders haven't even located the bandit hideouts and don't know how te recover what they lost, which is when they sent an emissary te a Steamwheedle rep in Arathi."

"Not to Horde officials at Skulk Rock? Their own faction couldn't help them?"

"Look laddie, ye know how the factions are. They care about politics, not people. The Raventusk are out of the way, isolated, not under threat by the Alliance or the Forsaken and produce few raw materials that the Horde as a whole needs. The only way they could find more opportunity is through charity, which won't help them in the long term, or by paying for it, which is why they came te us. Their elders are smart people, they know the reality of their situation."

"And how are we getting paid for all of this?" Navarion asked without shyness once more. "I understand they need help and all."

"But so do we, so does everybody in a way. There's no shame in requesting compensation."

"Right."

"So they worked out a deal. Their laborers have some opals they mine right at the city, and fortunately they've kept that under watch twenty four seven. The bandits haven't been able to raid it, and a few of them got caught-"

"Were the Raventusk able to beat any information out of them?"

Vegnus just shook his head, appearing almost disappointed. "The locals killed the bandits too quickly. All the culprits they caught had their heads beaten in before the elders could get to them. So anyway, the locals are paying us with a share of the opals they mine plus exemption from a Horde taxes for a Steamwheedle office there at their future port for the first five years. That alone will help us te pay off the costs of the construction and then some."

"Wait, if this tribe has an opal mine, the Horde would have taken an interest," Navarion countered. It only dawned on him then, but the claim sounded impossible.

"No, that isn't the case, son. Those gemstones are valuable, but not enough for a faction te build a port solely for the mine. If it were iron or something else they could use for war or heavy industry then maybe, but not jewelry." Appearing irritated again, Vegnus dramatically waved his hand as if to dismiss the young man's suspicious. "Look, our rep at Skulk Rock already scouted the area; this job is legit. Everything I'm telling ye now was told te me by people that already went te see."

A rather young looking high elf waitress collected their teacups and wiped the biscuit crumbs off the table. The two men paused their conversation, not for the sake of secrecy but due to the desire to speak without try not to lean around another person as they spoke. Once the waitress had taken their payment and left, they stood to find the caravan anyway.

"We only have an hour or so to check on the wagons and materials before the crew is ready to move out. We would have just shipped the materials there but obviously then they wouldn't need us, and flying this stuff out there would simply be illogical unless the place had a zeppelin platform - which, again, would need materials. And portals have become so expensive from regulation by mages' guilds that sending this many wagons through is too expensive to make economic sense." The dwarf became animated as they walked through the settlement toward the waiting wagons full of lumber, stone, iron and tools, displaying an interest in their work that made why he had become so respected very apparent. "Look here, I see some of the crew already milling about."

Navarion barely even noticed the half dozen uniformed workers of half a dozen different races as he and Vegnus surveyed the small wagon train near the guard post at the edge of town. What was on his mind, rather, was the fact that for the first time in months, he didn't find himself wondering about his place in life or what on Azeroth he was doing no matter where he happened to be at the time. It felt refreshing, uplifting and even inspiring, so much so that his defensive machismo receded somewhat.

"Hey Vegnus," he mumbled, interrupting the dwarf's long winded explanation of what each wagon contained.

"And this one is...what's that, laddie?"

Looking down at the diminutive man, Navarion almost felt humbled at the sense of purpose he'd been given. It wasn't profound, it wasn't life changing, but after a few weeks spent wandering around the Argent Crusade camp with no guild, no steady job and no real purpose for waking up in the morning, helping the people of some isolated town in the Hinterlands at least gave him a goal greater than himself.

"Thank you for accepting me here on the team," he said thoughtfully. "I really am glad to be here."

Vegnus merely stared at him like he was sick for a moment, then shook his head and laughed. "Yer needed on the team, son. That's why we want ye here. Don't mention it." There was a split second where he saw the sentimental look the dwarf used to give him when he would run around in the grass with his siblings as a child in Ratchet, and Navarion feared the dwarf would engage in a touching, cringe worthy conversation of pouring his heart out and saying his feelings of almost fatherly admiration out loud. Thankfully, the fear proved unfounded. "Now go get ye gear and ye bat. We got at least a day's travel te Skulk Rock and then half a day after that te reach the city itself."

Giving Vegnus a quick nod, Navarion sped off both to prepare for some much needed purpose in his life and to avoid the risk of any more opening up of old sentimentalities. His life was one of excitement and adventure; he didn't need memories of his past poking their way in.


	4. Misdirection

Scouting above the caravan, while a more mundane task in comparison to the overall mission, had already given Navarion quite a few thrills and an upsurge of motivation for the mission he'd undertaken. The six wagons, twelve crew members and four other adventurers plus Vegnus looked like ants on the ground as Furball glided overhead, giving Navarion a good vantage point to scout for bandits. For the entire day's travel to Skulk Rock, there were none to be seen, but the exercise still helped him to feel as though he was serving a purpose greater than waking up late, going through the motions of practice drills and spending his nights at whatever local pub he could find.

Even the idle, pointless banter of the Steamwheedle crew members had proven a welcome distraction from the monotony of everyday life. Sure, their conversations were just as meandering and unenlightening as those of any of the shallow drinking buddies he'd met on the campaign against the Scourge, but they didn't feel empty. There was a certain sense of irreverent happiness behind their conversations and time-passing hobbies. Not that Navarion had ever been a depressed person; it was just that the light hearted, unpresumptuous nature of the teamsters was so endearing.

Edging Furball back over the road to keep the scatterbrained duskbat on track in the gradually disappearing sunlight, Navarion marveled at how jovial the group was. Two of the crew members were orcs, free to travel through Alliance territory despite their parents' generation having been sworn enemies of the faction. Two more were humans who were old enough to remember the factional wars yet malleable enough to look past the past and had even learned to speak Orcish. A deaf blood elf had wowed the rest of the crew with his ability to dance by feeling the vibration of musical instruments in the ground, and the sole ogre in the crew apparently knitted rather enviable quilts when they had downtime. They were a diverse group like the Argent Crusade troops he'd served with, but were far less serious and opinionated.

Just as when he had first arrived at the Hinterlands, the bouts where Furball wasn't dragging them off course or panicking at loud noises in the distance were serene and peaceful. Unlike when he had first arrived, there wasn't the wondering over when he'd find steady work, steady interaction and steady purpose. The presence of the group below - even the sort of uptight and prudish Anchorite Traska - was welcome and even preferred. The scenery of the Hinterlands appeared even more beautiful than it already had, and in spite of his newfound enthusiasm for the job they were set on, Navarion almost felt sad that their efforts would lead to the land being tamed. Without a doubt, the lives of all the various peoples in the region were difficult and dangerous, but so much of Azeroth had become settled that the thought of some areas remaining wild appealed to him.

The moon rose and the crew didn't stop, pushing the highlands raptors pulling the wagons to reach the Horde encampment fast so they could rest in proper beds (stables in the case of the raptors) and perhaps squeeze another day of rest from Vegnus. They all lit torches to light the way, though way up high Navarion could see even better at night than he could in the day, thanks to his mother's genes. The wind whispered into his long ears once more, and if he trusted the dumb duskbat for a few seconds, he could close his eyes and almost hear his middle sister's voice. Much like their elven mother and aunt, Issinia had a voice that sounded like wind chimes in the distance despite sharing Navarion's more trollish facial features. It was pleasant to listen to, and even accounting for her judgmental and bossy nature, he could listen to her talk for more than an hour without feeling bored. Due in part to his admitted hypocrisy, Navarion was extremely protective of his sisters in spite of his own licentious, immoral behavior when under the influence of alcohol. He loved them all dearly, no matter how much they complained about his conservative nature feeling overwhelming to them.

Even if she shouted at him in anger, Issinia's voice still always made her sound gracious and elegant.

"It's not your business what I choose to wear!" he could almost remember her yelling as a particularly strong gust of wind whipped by.

The exquisite and overpriced evening gown lie in between them on the floor of the hallway. The pitcher of apple cider had been set back on the small table beneath the hallway mirror in haste, and condensation and spilled cider covered the surface of the naturally grown extension of the Kaldorei-style house. Yes, as a living extension the table could easily be cleansed of any stains, but it was just another sign of the rash thinking and lack of foresight that had overtaken Navarion when he snatched Issinia's brand new dress away and poured the cider all over it.

"The hell it is my business!" he yelled right back, though less forcefully as confusion clouded the anger and guilt battling for control of his mind. "You have to pass by the marina to get to Nephentha's house, you're not walking in front of a bunch of sailors dressed like that!"

Rage broke through the fifteen year old girl's voice for the first time in her life - at least, as far as her brother knew. "That's not for you to decide! That's not for you! You're not dad and auntie Irien didn't say anything!"

Navarion felt his advantage slip as their godmother's lack of concern for the dress was mentioned. Truthfully, he felt awful for ruining the dress even seconds after having done it, but arrogance and ego prevented him from apologizing and his sister's tone of voice prevented him from backing down for fear of being proven wrong about his actions. "I'm not dad but I'm your older brother, Goddess damnit-"

"Do not take Her name in vain!"

"-and this is a family decision!"

"No it is NOT a family decision!" Tears flowed down Issinia's cheeks, a mixture of both pain at losing a dress that had been so painstakingly tailored based on her constant revisions and demands of the seamstress, and anger at her older brother's controlling nature. "I'm not a child anymore, I know what's appropriate in public and what isn't! Don't treat me like I'm stupid!"

"You're careless and foolish if you think you can pass by a bunch of drunken dock workers and not have them make dirty comments to you!"

"Then I'll emasculate them in front of their peers like I did that one time!"

"They'll try to grab you!"

"I'm tougher than all the humans and orcs even, I'll throw them off the pier if they do!"

"No! I won't allow it!" At that point, Navarion was shouting at himself, angry at his own blockheaded stupidity. Everything his sister said made sense to him, and he was the reason her evening would be ruined. She had only a few hours until Nephentha's house party - both her parents and theirs were out of town that night, in different towns and thus much easier to fool into thinking each daughter was visiting a third person's household that night. But Navarion felt challenged, trapped. His disappointment in himself boiled over, and his lack of self control wouldn't allow him to remove the aim of his anger from his sister. "You're not dressing in that dress-"

"I hate you!" It was the first and only time Issinia, the borderline religious fundamentalist, ever said those words to anybody. "I hate the way you treat the family, I hate your two faces, I hate that you're my brother!"

Floored. Stunned. Speechless. It was all Navarion could to to avoid shouting again as he shut down mentally and forced himself to hold still as Issinia ran sobbing up the stairs, slamming the door to her room shut so hard that waves rippled across the surface of what little cider was still left in the pitcher. Leaning against the wall and rubbing his face in his hands, all Navarion was left with was a ruined custom made dress along the style of night elf priestesses - definitely NOT excessively revealing or inappropriate - and the lingering questions over why he had behaved so stupidly.

The tickle in his eye brought him back to the here and now as he shook his head in reaction, wondering how a droplet of condensation has worked its way into his flying goggles. Far below, a voice that sounded similar to wind chimes but with an unnatural, haunting echo called to him, and he looked down to see Nephentha's familiar face looking up.

"Skulk Rock is right there," the young naga sea witch in training called to him. "You need to land so they can register us all as one group."

Eager to rid himself of the negativity, Navarion quickly urged Furball to circle and descend, ironically finding comfort in the friend whose secret house party had been the backdrop of his bad memory. He landed in haste, and took the opportunity to stretch his legs and walk next to the others as they rode, leaving his surprisingly light bodied bat to perch on one of the wagons. Nephentha had descended from her mount as well - a semi aquatic creature called a coatl. Navarion had seen it back at Ratchet when the two of them were children. Its wide, webbed wings looked similar to those of his father's pterodactyl and the head looked rather reptilian, but there was something that spoke of the ocean in the mount's features. She led it by the reins as she slithered along, the usually slow land movement speed of both rider and mount matching the gradual pace of the wagon train perfectly.

As much as he wanted to avoid her, he didn't want to be rude. She had shown up on the same mission by chance, and their families were rather close. On the one hand, that made her a familiar and comforting face; on the other, it also made her dangerous. Nephentha wasn't a goody two shoes like Issinia, but she was very close to the diverse community back home. Undoubtedly, anything he said to her would be reported back to his parents. As it was, the thought of them knowing his whereabouts since he'd run away years ago terrified him.

As if sensing his apprehension, the young sea witch began the cautious, roundabout conversation as the wagon train approached the security checkpoint outside the Horde town.

"I'm as surprised as you are to be on the same quest," she said while glancing at him sideways from the corner of her eye. "I didn't plan this."

"I wouldn't accuse you of doing so. Plus, I don't mind." There was a brief pause after his sentence as if she had expected more, and he spoke just to prevent more uncomfortable questions from flying his way. "So did you come as part of your training?"

She snorted in affirmation, bowing her head slightly. The crest like fins from the top of her head down the back of her neck resembled his Mohawk in a way, just long enough to mark her as different from her people's elven roots but much shorter than her mother's, making Nephentha appear less strange and more exotic, in a way. Her coloration in particular was aesthetically pleasing, if not physically attractive to him due to the anatomical differences. In another life, he might have viewed her as a potential object of his charm. As it was, he still found her pleasing to look at in a way and without the pressure of feeling the urge to flirt or impress.

When she didn't elaborate, he felt confused. She was quiet, but not that quiet.

"You know, Yara may have contacts at that mage's academy in the Exodar," he suggested in reference to the draenei neighbor back in Ratchet who was Vegnus' coequal in overseeing operations and another friend of his parents'. "Not that I'm not glad to see you here, but this region could be a little dangerous." Navarion looking out of the corner of his own eye for a reaction to his thinly veiled jab at the proud naga.

At his suggestion that she might not be able to handle the danger, she became a little more animated - as he had hoped when planning the comment in his head. "I am more than capable of handling myself out here Navarion, thank you very much," she replied in a calm voice. He had grown up with her, however, and he noticed the resentment in her body language. "Besides, there are different schools of arcane magic. What the other people of Azeroth use is not what my people use."

"And I'm assuming relations are still so bad with your parents...um...tribe? Family?"

"Naga are divided into clans," she said flatly.

"Yes, your clan isn't on good terms with your parents, right?" A second after he had uttered the sentence, he realized he had brought up the topic of parents. She'd have an excuse to push further now due to his lack of foresight.

"None of our people who choose to embrace the other races of the world can stay at their original settlements," she replied wistfully, and the thoughtful look in her eye signaled that she was genuinely interested in talking about the subject. "The curse of Azshara is not that our capitol was sunk, nor the loss of most of the world's landmass. It was the bigotry that lies in the hearts of so many. For my parents' embracing of the outside world, we're all eternally banned from ever returning to Stehnaz."

"So you have no way of learning more magic beyond what your mother taught you?"

"That is correct, unfortunately. Our magic involves the manipulation of the climate locally, the usage of pressure and temperature to create storms large and small, and even to bend the power of lightning to our will. Not via spiritualism or ancestors like Hogar's people, but by the power of the arcane." She was entirely lost at that point, and likely would have continued even if he had walked away. She didn't even notice that she had subconsciously handed her Steamwheedle ID card to the Horde officials at the gate of the rebuilt town of Skulk Rock as their caravan passed through to the travelers' waystation. "My repertoire of spells is humble, but it is my hope that the practice I can gain by venturing out into the world will allow me to wield them to great efficiency."

So enthralled was Nephentha that Navarion even found himself drawn in, helping to unfasten the raptors from the wagons without even realizing it. "I know what you mean. I know a handful of magical manipulations myself, and I don't intend on learning more to be honest. I'd rather use what I know effectively than have a hundred tricks up my sleeve I might not know how to use."

"Your parents taught you well," she answered, catching him off guard. When he turned to look at her, he noticed she had been facing him fully, and her stare was piercing not because of the structure of her eyes but because of her intense gaze.

Once again, Vegnus saved the day, rallying the seventeen travelers in a circle around him as the local stablemaster took all twelve of their raptors for them.

"Alright, listen up! We can't afford te stay here more than twelve hours; we have a schedule te maintain," the dwarf said to the disappointed groans of the crew. "Look, I know we had a long trek from New Southshore, but once we're at Raventusk City we'll be able te rest. It will take us a few days there te get settled in and organize labor among the locals anyway."

One of the middle aged humans in the crew raised his hand for a question, but slowly lowered it when he saw nobody else asking anything.

Vegnus clapped his hands in the way Yaromira often did when ending one of her one sided monologues to a work crew. "Come on, let's get right te bed and sleep. We'll only have a few hours tomorrow morning te eat and get dressed. We have more than half a day's travel ahead of us and we have te pass through Vilebranch territory, so we'll need all the rest we can get."

"Oh, I remember now," piped up the human that had raised his hand before.

Apparently knowing the man well, Vegnus was already prepared to answer a question that the man hadn't even asked yet. "No, we don't need te tend te the raptors ourselves, I paid the stablehands te handle that. And our local rep handled reservations at the two inns for us, we have enough space booked so ye can just find any empty bed ye like. The residents here are thrilled te have the extra business."

Satisfied by the prompt answers, the entire weary group dispersed into quietly chatting pairs and trios as they made haste to their sleeping quarters. Before Navarion could even take a step toward Vegnus to save himself from an uncomfortable discussion, Nephentha had already taken his arm in two of hers.

"Surely you could at least walk me to the bunks for the ladies here among the crew members," she said nonchalantly while pulling him along before he could protest. Her gaze was fixated straight forward, not even peeking at him via her peripheral vision.

"A powerful Stormweaver like yourself shouldn't require an escort in a secure settlement like this," he protested weakly as he allowed himself to be pulled along at a rate so slow he knew she was doing it on purpose.

"Stormweaver," she hummed bemusedly. "I've never heard that term before."

"I made it up just now. It sounds befitting."

"That it does, that it does." Her tone was so nonchalant and casual that it was over the top; far too strong a sense of her overacting. They strolled in silence toward the inn the rest of the women had chosen until the others were out of earshot, before she addressed him in Nazja - the language of the naga that was more or less mutually intelligible with the language of his mother's people. "You seem to have had an adventurous past few years."

He hesitated before answering, already knowing where the conversation was heading. "You could say that," he replied in Darnassian. She still wasn't looking at him directly, which only made him more uneasy. "Look, Nepha," he said, addressing her by the nickname she only allowed a handful of people on her life to use.

She waved one of her two free hands to cut him off. "I'm not going to run and tattle on you, if that's what you're thinking. We aren't kids in the neighborhood anymore and you're old enough to understand what moving out of your family's home without saying goodbye did to them."

"It was for the best. And thanks for being discreet, but anyway, my leaving was for the best. Even for my parents."

"Your mother cried, you know," Nephentha stated with a bit of resentment in her tone.

Navarion's pulse immediately surged as shame which he had repressed for so long threatened to boil up in his throat in the form of a stress induced acid reflux. For one split second he could almost hear his mother's voice on the wind, singing a Kaldorei lullaby to him softly. Sensing the approach of the guilt trip, he fell in to the defense mechanism of self delusion as he tried to usher Nephentha to the inn the best he could.

"I'm going home soon anyway," he bluffed as they reached the long porch of the smaller of the two inns. "It will be a great surprise. I just need to do a bit of adventuring of my own, which you now seem to comprehend well."

He tried to rotate in her grasp, and she didn't force him to keep his arm locked in hers. Face to face, she inspected him for a moment and he could have sworn he detected a bit of sadness mixed in with her disbelief at his claim. The enchantment on the massive pearl at the end of her coral staff hummed just before she nodded in affirmation that the conversation was over, but she remained facing him with her upper body as her coils slithered inside the inn, a method of locomotion that her snake like body allowed her.

"If you say so, Navarion," she said skeptically as she disappeared behind the doors.

As much as he had enjoyed the quest so far, and as much as he was looking forward to seeing what exploits this development project plagued by banditry would bring, Navarion was already weary of all the traveling, mounting up, traversing highways and passing through checkpoints.

His bags were ready once more, his armor donned once again, his gun holstered and his haunches prepared for a lot of riding. Shouldering both of his travel bags, he walked down the stairs of the room he had shared with five other crew members the night before and exited, relieved that at least the checkout had already been handled for him. Standing on the porch as he went outside was Hogar, the Orc who had spent so many years in prison for a crime he hadn't committed alongside Navarion's father. The green skinned man's plate armor bore many dents and notches, though his battle axe glistened after having been recently sharpened. He smoked on a pipe filled with tobacco and cloves as he leaned against a railing and watched the locals go about their work, radiating the very essence of calmness and peace.

For a guy who had spent so many years in a hellish slave labor camp after being railroaded by a corrupt judicial system, Hogar was surprisingly laid back and even upbeat. Although Navarion had never met the man prior to Quel'Danil Lodge, he and the other young people in Ratchet had heard much about him. He was a hero, a legend, an example of someone screwed over by the system only to dust himself off and start over again without even complaining about how he'd been wronged. He turned to see the half elf, half troll standing next to him, and the orc's stubbly chin shifted into a smile as though he had nothing in the world to worry about at all.

"Tell me what's good," Hogar said in a voice not at all like the harsh tones typical of his people.

It took Navarion a moment to register what the man had said, and another moment to realize it had been directed at him. "Wha...what?"

"Tell me what's good."

"You mean...like..." Navarion's voice trailed off as he tried to decipher what he assumed to be a trick question or a riddle from a man that had traveled far and wide, and been around the proverbial block more than a few times. "Are you asking about life in general?"

Shaking his head, Hogar tutted his tongue lightly. "You're overthinking. Stop. Just say what's good." He remained smiling the whole time despite not approving of the young man's first response.

Navarion stared at the older man for a second as he tried to figure out how to even approach the question. "I'm glad to be on this mission. We'll help peo and hopefully find some excitement along the way."

Hogar smiled even wider, but the source of his amusement was indiscernible. "Alright then," was his only response before he went back to people watching and pipe smoking.

Confounded, Navarion stood another moment before realizing the conversation was over and ambled over to the stables, hoping to find Vegnus and make himself useful. Anything to keep his mind off of another half day or so of monotonous travel.

He didn't have to look for long.

"There ye are!" the caravan leader exclaimed as he multitasked between addressing Navarion and directing the teamsters as they fastened the reins of the raptors back onto the wagons. "They already prepared yer bat for ye, and most everyone else is loaded up and ready te go."

For whatever reason, a second wind for the travel swelled up within him at the sound of Vegnus' enthusiasm, and the dwarf took notice. "Excited, are ye?"

"Eager to get some serious work done. I'm almost hoping that some of these bandits try to attack our caravan," Navarion beamed with a grin while snapping his fingers to grab Furball's attention.

Vegnus frowned in disapproval. "Be careful what ye wish for, laddie," the short man scolded as Hogar and Nephentha joined the rest of the group. "Don't roll yer eyes, either! These are the livelihoods of an entire city of people we have in our hands!"

Holding his tongue out of respect, Navarion mounted his duskbat in preparation for what he hoped would be his final long trek for a while. He really didn't see what all the fuss was about. If anything, killing some thieves would mean that many less bad guys in the world. The thought of the clash of metal and crackling of magic occupied his mind as the caravan mobilized for the last leg of its journey.


	5. The Arrival

Much to Navarion's chagrin, they had encountered no bandits or even other travelers on the road. Just wide open spaces and a well built but lonely highway through the wilderness, and lots and lots of scouting ahead on his bat. This time, Nephentha assisted with the surveying duties, flying high on her coatl as she searched for potential threats to the group as well. Luckily for him, she took the job even more seriously than he did, and made no attempts to speak to him across the wind as they soared.

There were no interruptions aside from the occasional arguments and loud banter from the crew members below, at least until the caravan entered Vilebranch territory.

The tribe, like most trolls, held allegiance to no one other than itself. Only three tribes of trolls had joined the Horde - Darkspear, Raventusk and Shatterspear - while only a single tribe, the Shadowtooth, had joined the now independent faction formed by the night elves and simply terms the 'Sentinels.' Those four didn't even form ten percent of the worldwide population of trolls, who were by far Azeroth's most populous race. Zul'Gurub, Zul'Aman, Zul'Farrak and the now cleansed Zul'Drak alone had a combined population that outnumbered that of the humans, orcs, dwarves, Tauren and goblins entirely, and there were plenty of troll settlements no associated with the big four. We're it not for the fact that virtually all of the trolls' energy was spent on fighting each other, they would have ruined the entire planet - by the admittance of Navarion's father himself.

As they approached the ziggurat city of Jintha'Alor, Vegnus ordered both Navarion and Nephentha to land. Verbal agreements to end hostilities or not, nobody trusted the Vilebranch as far as they could throw them, and they didn't want to risk being seen by the local batriders. Ironically, they didn't even spot a single scout party or even spy on their way to the cliffs leading down to the eastern coastal plain of the Hinterlands, and by the time Raventusk City came into view, even the usually stoic Hogar had become a bit listless from the lack of interaction.

Ramparts and a high wall made of felled tree trunks strung together with thick ropes surrounded an enormous area, and a high watchtower with a thatched roof signified the front gates of the city. There were some axe throwers with manes the color of blood and hides the color of Hogar's skin loping about in front of the wall, likely on bandit patrol. Even from afar, their stature and gait identified them as trolls, as did their very casual, relaxed behavior at the site of a caravan of outsiders approaching. The closer they got, the more giddy Navarion felt for a number of reasons.

Not only was he on an adventure in a very remote area, but he was also interacting with a strange people in a strange land. He had never met many jungle trolls aside from his father and a single neighbor; they did pass through Ratchet occasionally, but within the Horde their number was much less than that of the other races, and they were a rarity. Sure, Navarion's father was a jungle troll, but being married to a night elf had domesticated the man. Aside from lessons in Zandali and the voodoo magic he'd learned, Navarion knew very little about the Darkspear, much less other tribes of jungle trolls. And according to what he'd read in books, forest trolls were as different from jungle trolls as night elves were from blood elves.

To begin with, the fact that they were waved through the gates without even being asked for any ID was a huge difference. Jungle trolls of all tribes would have been driven by their cultural paranoia to confiscate the weapons of each visitor and scrutinize each one for their intent. The axe throwers in the watchtower, however, continued chewing on what appeared to be cinnamon and merely motioned for the caravan to pass.

"Isn't that kind of low security for a place that has problems with outsiders sneaking in at night and stealing things?" Navarion asked Vegnus while leading the extremely nervous Furball by the reins.

The dwarf remained stoic and almost a little tense as he stood and waited for all the wagons to pass through the gate before moving forward. "A bit of machismo and arrogance," Vegnus commented while searching around the little dirt road just beyond the walls. "The forest trolls tend not te take outsiders seriously, even dangerous ones. Notice how there's literally nobody te inspect us for at least another thirty yards."

It was only then that Navarion realized he had let his own guard down due to the relaxed nature of the axe throwers who hadn't even approached them. He'd failed to observe his surroundings at all, and rapidly craned his neck to get a good look. It had to be at least half a mile to the shoreline, and most of the area enclosed for the city - the walls on three side and the ocean on the fourth - was entirely empty of buildings of trees. Probably for future expansion, the half troll thought to himself, but already a possible security risk; a proper rogue would have an easy time sneaking about at night. In fact, Navarion had already passed into the city limits and hadn't even seen any of the locals up close yet. The guards at the watchtower were two and a half stories up, the patrolmen along the walls were more than ten yards away and the actual settled part of the land - filled with huts and long houses that weren't so different from those of other trolls or even elves - still lied a good deal ahead. Moving forward with Vegnus to move in front of the wagon train, he wracked his brain for any last minute questions.

"Do we have a place to stay? Any guarantees of food? A warehouse of sorts for storing materials?"

Tying his long hair in a ponytail for utility's sake, Vegnus continued looking for someone to greet them ahead as he spoke. "Our rep at Skulk Rock said the Raventusk will provide tents for our workers and our building materials and tools, but they really pushed for us te buy food from their local growers and hunter gatherers. Not because they're cheap, but apparently they have no government mint sanctioned by the Horde and since the place is so neglected, they're literally running out of coins. I don't mean accounts on paper, I mean actual physical money. They want us te spend just so there are more coins in circulation."

"And I take it the cartel probably won't reimburse us for that, right?"

The dwarf smirked sarcastically as the group finally passed the first few huts, and the answer became clear.

And immediately after that, so did the pressing need of the locals as well.

"Man, what is that smell?" Navarion asked while raising a hand to his long, more trollish nose.

Outside each hut, piles of paper, half eaten animal carcasses, vegetable waste and broken household items laid strewn about. The edges of the dirt road was lined with a layer of fresh mud between it and the grass, and bits of glass, more paper and old food stuck up out of the dark brown slop, much in the way a goblin landfill might look and smell. Old shoes sat inside of an unused Horde mailbox for diplomatic missives that had likely ceased arriving years ago, and domesticated turkeys and sheep wandered about, going to the bathroom in public squares with no supervision from their owners.

"That's the garbage, obviously," Jalinde, the high elven ranger from Quel'Danil, chimed in from just behind the two men.

"Yes that's obvious, but where the fel are the garbage cans? Why hasn't this stuff been collected yet?" Navarion felt absolutely flabbergasted, not having seen a rural area with garbage before. Sure, he'd seen pollution before - Stormwind and Booty Bay came to mind - but those were densely populated urban areas. Raventusk City, despite its large population, was still rural. Rural people typically recycled everything and threw nothing away. It didn't make sense.

"This is part of what we're trying te help the locals overcome," Vegnus explained. "Old habits die hard; I know from me own people. This place used te be a village, and the population exploded after the factional wars died down. They got more people before the learned about things a modern city needs like water carriers, trash collectors or proper industry."

Just then, the first group of real, live forest trolls jumped into Navarion's field of vision. A group of four children that would have just barely been school age had the city any schoolhouses ran in between the group and the wagons, unconcerned that they might be stepped on by a raptor or disrupt the people's work.

His long ears pricked up at the sound of Zandali.

"Hurry up, Sharkasa!" one of the boys chirped to a girl as the four children raced.

The girl leaped ahead of him, not even looking back. "Taran likes to eat bugs!"

Their green bodies quickly ducked behind another hut the occupants of which were likely out at work. All four of the children were the size of Vegnus, but they seemed as happy go lucky as children anywhere else. More huts and fallen, hollowed out trees sporting tarps covering the openings came into view as the entire caravan pushed further into the city. The huts were uneven, facing in different directions and crudely constructed. Those that had doors hanging open displayed mostly dirt floors and open spaces lacking definite rooms, containing partitions instead. Navarion had read about life in remote areas in books, and seen a few photos of the old expeditions of the great explorer Hemet Nesingwary into Stranglethorn Vale, but actually seeing squalor like this up close was very eye opening. If the young man hadn't realized how well off his family was before, he certainly did then.

The crew stayed silent as Vegnus continued to lead, seeming to know where he was going. As they broke past more of the densely packed huts, they entered a cramped, open air bazaar where, for the first time, Navarion felt like he was a short person.

By the standards of jungle trolls, his father was a big fellow, especially for the Darkspear tribe. He could pass as a member of the more robust Bloodscalp or Atalai tribes easily. Due in part to his half elven heritage, Navarion was shorter and lighter on his feet than his father, but he had never been considered small. Surrounded by proper forest trolls, however, he found a race which he assumed must have been some sort of offshoot of half-giants. All of the men fell into a handful of categories of huge, with very little variation among them. Most of the women could look Navarion's in the eye save the younger ones, and they were heavier than the lithe Darkspear he'd grown up meeting in Ratchet. The whole population wore loincloths that barely covered the naughtier bits, and the majority of them walked around the dirt roads with no shoes on.

Unlike any other race of people he'd been around, the forest trolls took absolutely no interest in the diverse group of travelers hauling wagons right in the middle of their city. Were it a settlement of even a more reserved race such as the Tauren, at least a few heads would have turned. Among these people, however, the cartel caravan could have been invisible. Nobody really cared.

Smatterings of several languages could be heard in the relatively quiet ambience of the open air market despite all the patrons and vendors being of the same cultural group. There were no guards to stop potential market pickpockets, and everyone went about their business as if following some sort of schedule despite the entire city being a disorganized mess in every way imaginable. A single Horde flag that must have been older than Navarion himself flew on a tree bearing splinters from where its branches had been ripped off as a sort of crude flagpole. Other than that, there wasn't a sliver of modern civilization to be seen among all the people trading stacks of clay plates for piles of berries or preparing live, greatly suffering animals for eating right in front of paying customers.

"Hey, watch it!" the slightly dumbstruck half troll spat out in Zandali, not even realizing he'd switched languages, as something soft brushed against his hand.

Almost immediately, his heart fluttered in a way it hadn't done in a few years as the soft touch of a woman's thigh against his hand was matched my the strong scent of marigolds as wavy, likely permed hair tickled his shoulder. He turned at the same time she did, meeting two burgundy eyes at the same level as his sterling silvers before she dropped out of view. A nose that was a bit thinner than that of a jungle troll but just as long curved over a broad upper lip curling up in an almost taunting smirk. Impressive in every physical aspect, she continued to face him halfway as she walked away, arching her back in a manner that would have been seen as too flashy among any other race of people. Her smirk was just high enough to expose the part of her upper row of teeth and gums where her tusks sprouted from, and he noticed that they had been filed down to be less sharp and bore copper rings at the bases. He nearly walked into a row of still living, completely skinned bobcats hanging from meat hooks on a wooden rack, their sad, pitiful eyes darting around but failing to break the half night elf out of his walking trance with their pleas for mercy killing. Another second later and she was gone, her leather sandals clacking against the plots of gravel on the narrow lanes of the market as she disappeared into the crowd.

"Why don't ye just lick her, ye horn dog," Vegnus scolded from somewhere off to the side.

"Mm...huh?"

"We got work te do and it has no relation te chasing tail among the locals," the dwarf elaborated as Navarion snapped out of it and realized the caravan had come to a stop in a small circle naturally fenced in by pine trees. "These people aren't like old Khujand," Vegnus said in reference to Navarion's father. "Yer pa is a domesticated troll and even he still beats people te an inch of their lives if people get touchy feely with yer sisters. Don't think for a second that the way the ladies dress here means yer free te jump inte their huts."

"No, no, of course not, we're here to work," Navarion mumbled noncommittally as he did a double take upon realizing he had just witnessed animals being eaten alive. "Um...this place is a little behind the times, isn't it?"

"Shhh! Yer the one that was telling me that many of these people only speak Common!" The group took to unpacking their things and inspecting the tents while Vegnus pulled Navarion along with the other adventurers out of the clearing, save Nephentha who remained behind to supervise the workers, "Now be on yer best behavior, we have to go greet the local leaders at their longhouse. Just remember: yer the mixed race kid who demonstrates that trolls and elves can get along, but emphasize the paternal side of yer heritage. No speaking Thalassian with Jalinde or anything."

"I feel that I can function as a rather apt ambassador myself," the high elven ranger chimed in from the other side of Vegnus as they walked.

"Ye and me both still have some hurdles te pass in that respect though, lass," Vegnus whispered while nodding to the unresponsive guards by what looked like a communal longhouse made from gigantic, hollowed out, sideways tree trunks from massive Lordaeron redwoods. "We can all open hearts and minds here, but let Hogar and Navarion take the lead at first."

The biracial young man did a double double take that time. "Take the...are you serious? I'm still not entirely sure of all the services we're going to be providing!"

"Yes ye are, don't worry. This is more te show face than anything, nobody is going to ask tough questions."

A man who was likely of average size among the forest trolls stood by the flap covering the main entrance of the meeting hall, barefoot and clad in a loincloth and nothing else. He lacked the war paint of the axe throwers, but his blood red Mohawk and rather long tusks were intimidating nonetheless. They'd been passing forest trolls since they entered the city, but this was the first male Navarion had seen up close as the man came to greet them.

"Welcome ta Raventusk City. Ya people're tha builder teachers, yeah?" The man's accent was surprisingly close to that of Navarion's father, who was from the very far north of Stranglethorn. It was refreshing to hear, and reassuring considering the unsettling nature of the slightly above savage tribe.

"That's right! We're here to help your people learn to build for themselves and seek greater opportunities," Hogar replied in Common that was surprisingly unaccented. "These are the main representatives of the cartel. Are you one of the village elders?"

The guy with hide the color of Hogar's skin was somewhere between animal and man, and his chuckle was raspy and not as deep as one would expect. "No, I'm Wendigo. I represent tha ocean workers in tha City. I'm gonna be workin' with ya people on tha docks and shit."

He led them inside a narrow hallway that led into the dimly lit, open area of the main longhouse. About two dozen older forest trolls sat on very low stools while guards stood at the halls leading out and a smattering of children squatted on the dirt floor, chatting in the back. Troll fetishes that looked similar to what Navarion had seen from his jungle troll father but not exactly the same hung from the ceiling and the neck jewelry of some members of the tribe. An older male and female sat among the elders, situated on a slightly elevated wooden platform signifying that they must be some sort of leaders.

The older female inspected the group as Navarion, Hogar, Vegnus, Traska and Jalinde lined up to face the city elders. Her grey hair was tied in two loose braids behind her head, and her plain clothes spoke of a leader who was probably close to those she led and carried herself with a certain humility. "I take it ya're tha ones here for tha development contract," she said in Low Common at a pace that insinuated she might be a native speaker despite her accent.

"That we are," said Hogar as he introduced the group one by one. Quick pleasantries were exchanged, but less than were they among orcs, Tauren or humans and far less than were they among elves. "Our crew members are setting up camp as we speak, and once we rest we'll be ready to begin work in the morning."

"That's good to know," the female - who had just introduced herself as Taiji - answered casually, seeming to take little interest. "And I trust that ya all can make ya own schedule in regard ta finishin' tha job?"

"That we can. In fact, we have an order of projects already prepared. The wharf itself comes first while the tracking of these thieves will continue parallel to all the other operations."

Ven'jin, the male elder, shifted on his stool to listen better. "And ya...colorful associates here," he said while motioning to the group. "These are the ones who will track tha bandits down?"

"Not only that, but they're here as cultural ambassadors as well, to help the people here open up a little to the outside world," Hogar explained as he bowed his head respectfully. "Anchorite Traska is an Alliance representative, intent on promoting understanding now that the two factions have ceased open hostilities against one another."

"I am delighted to be here," Traska said as she courtsied.

Hogar pointed to Jalinde next, almost hesitating for a moment as he came to the most difficult sell. "Ranger Summerdrake represents the high elves of Quel'Danil and wishes to demonstrate that your people and hers have put the past behind them."

A few of the elders sat up a little more to get a better look at the high elf. Some of them appeared dismissive, others frowned in disapproval, while a handful nodded. A few eyes darted to Taiji and Ven'jin, expecting some sort of an official response to a member of a race that fought many wars against their own in the past. There was a pregnant moment before the two lead elders looked at each other and then back at the group.

"We appreciate tha initiative," Taiji droned flatly, and considering the lingering racism between forest trolls and high elves, it was technically a positive response.

"I appreciate your graciousness as hosts," Jalinde replied with a salute that earned some laughs from the children squatting nearby.

Ven'jin had already started to lean forward and examine Navarion curiously, and without saying anything to Hogar or the others, he code switched to Zandali. "Do you understand what I'm saying right now, son?" he asked, drawing the attention of most of the elders to the young man.

Never one to shy away from the spotlight, Navarion took a deep breath and tried to change the thoughts in his head from Common, his mother tongue, to Zandali, the weakest of his three languages and which mostly consisted of looking up dirty words in a dictionary from one of his family's neighbors.

"Yes, for the most part I can."

The children all looked shocked and chattered amongst themselves, likely due to Navarion's glowing eyes and lighter build. None of the murmuring sounded negative, though, and he felt more confident.

"I smell the voodoo on you. Is it from your mother or your father?"

"My father is a shadow hunter," Navarion replied proudly.

The change of the elders warming up to the group was palpable as they realized one of the outsiders was very close to their roots. And just as quickly as the small sit down meeting had started, it abruptly came to a stop.

"Our people still have much ta learn about tha world," Taiji announced in Common while standing to signal the meeting was over. "They want ta learn how ta adapt and become a part of tha international community, but you all should expect ta find some misunderstandin's along tha way." The other elders stood up as well, and Hogar shot her a confused expression. "We just needed ta see ya here, and be sure that tha agreement would be fulfilled. All formalities were handled by ya rep some time ago. Ya're all free ta roam in tha city durin' tha project, but please don't leave without informin' one of tha guards. We can't afford ta have an outsider bein' kidnapped and makin' us look bad."

"You have our word that the work will be finished promptly and without incident," Hogar promised as he waited for the elders to leave before leading the rest of the group outside.

Once they had left and moved out of earshot of the locals, Navarion looked at the others. "That's it?"

Vegnus only laughed as if he'd seen such brief, seemingly pointless episodes before. "That's kind of usual here. They just want te see that we're here, and serious about getting te work. More of a formality from a very informal people."

They reached the clearing of trees, noticing the two axe throwers nearby who were playing marbles with carved pebbles and completely ignoring the crew members they were ostensibly supposed to protect. After settling down around some logs that had been dragged in to serve as benches, Vegnus continued.

"There won't be any work today, not after a long trip like that," he said, much to the relief of everyone. "Navarion, I'll need ye with Jalinde. Ye both are going te be on night shift for scouting for thieves, so ye best get some sleep now. Nepha and Hogar will scout during the day shift, and Traska is going te switch between assisting during the day shift and helping me watch the laborers."

"Get some sleep now is all you needed to say," Navarion joked while ambling over to one of the tents. He hadn't even sat down with the others, and almost managed to beat Jalinde to the sleeping quarters in his desire for some rest after all the recent traveling.

Even though he had technically been well rested, his brain needed to shut down momentarily and just take in all that had happened. After wandering lost in the world and in life, almost losing his mount and spending monotonous days scouting for nothing, he felt the feeling of excitement mix with his mental fatigue, and by the time he had removed his armor and laid in the bed that would be his, his head was spinning. Not a dizziness from a physical cause, but simply due to the nervous yet positive anticipation of what another new experience and possible adventure would bring.

* * *

His dreams about the smile of the Raventusk woman he'd passed in the bazaar that day were rudely interrupted by shouting in two different languages. Opening his eyes in a flash, Navarion was relieved when he noticed that while the shouting sounded like it had arisen from conflict, it wasn't an actual emergency announcement or sudden raid on the city. Multiple men were yelling about something in Zandali while the voice of an Orc spoke Common in what sounded like an attempt to calm people down.

It was dark when Navarion got out from under the covers, and he almost worried he had overslept for a second. Over the commotion, he checked his miniature clock and found that his shift wouldn't start for at least half an hour. Regardless, he had nothing better to do, and he slipped some shoes on before exiting the tent in his linens and leathers to see what was going on.

The severed head on the ground facing right up at him wasn't what he had initially expected.

"His head should go on a pike as a warning!" bellowed a familiar sounding voice speaking Zandali.

Just outside of the clearing where the cartel crew had set up camp, about half a dozen green figures engaged in a heated debate about something lying on the ground between them. A female gnoll crew member peeked out of one of the tents to see what was happening as well, and Vegnus' familiar voice could already be heard approaching as Navarion walked out of the clearing to get a better look, following the trail of blood from the severed head of a human.

"We can warn him, that's fine," Hogar, the shorter of the green figures, said to a group of dangerously excited Raventusk tribespeople. The Orc lacked the normal command and confidence in his voice as the five forest trolls bobbed up and down and grumbled in what sounded like a combination of anger and giddiness, teetering on the edge of a dangerous bloodlust. "But what use is he to us if he's dead?"

"There ain't no use for thieves!" Wendigo bellowed to the raucous agreement of his four compatriots.

"What's all this...oh," Navarion said while leaning his chin on his hand.

A decapitated human body wearing the trappings of a rogue lied on the ground, blood gushing from its torn neck. Navarion had been in many battles and bar fights, and had killed both soldiers and criminals - far more than either of his parents had when they were in their early twenties. But the fact that Wendigo's fish scaling knife dripped the human's blood made the killing seem especially gruesome.

"There is a use before we kill them, Wendigo," Hogar tried to reason. "If this is one of the bandits that have been infiltrating the city walls, we could have beaten some information out of him."

"We don't want his informations!" Wendigo bellowed again, as if he literally wasn't considering what the exasperated Orc had said at all.

Vegnus walked up to Navarion, ignoring the commotion as Hogar and Nephentha tried in vain to calm the tribespeople who happened to be up at that hour down. "Look laddie, it's a simple concept. Can ye explain it te them in Zandali? Hearing it in their language might encourage them te be a little less standoffish."

"I'll try," the biracial youth sighed as he loosened his posture the way trolls of most races tended to do and went over the Zandali vocabulary words in his head. "Wendigo, is this bandit the same as the ones that have been stealing from here before?"

Immediately, all eyes were on Navarion. Normally he reveled in being the center of attention, but the five forest trolls - every one of them possessing the countenance of a green, hawk-nosed ogre and much more agile and capable looking - snapped their eyes to him at the sound of their native tongue so quickly that the muscles in his back tensed for a moment. Even the two female guards in their group, largely considered to have less rights than women of other races, still intimidated him a bit. Their ears pricked up, however, and he could see through the war paint that even the women wore that their response to him was already resoundingly positive.

"Yes, this one is one of the ones!" Wendigo had an accent in Zandali so much like Navarion's father, but the man's voice wasn't as deep, nor was his thought process. "Why does the Orc want to save the bandits? We brought you all here to help us kill them!"

"I understand that. And I can assure you that, in due time, all of the bandit band shall be captured and brought to justice," Navarion replied, surprising the tribespeople and even himself by how well he had spoken. "But if we want to find where they're hiding, catching one of them alive can help us."

"You want us to let the thieves go!" one of the women accused him, leaning forward in a way that the Darkspear tribe usually associated with the posture of males. She was as beautiful as the rest of the local women in terms of her features, but like all forest trolls, her lack of refinement and, well, clothing made her seem less sexy and more scary.

"That's not what I'm saying," he said while raising his hands in the air defensively. "Look, thieves are cowards, right?" The five forest trolls actually applauded at the statement as though he were delivering a sermon, and Nephentha actually moved behind Hogar in unease at the very loud, physical nature of the locals. "So if we catch them alive and. Eat them up, and we tell them we will stop beating them up if they tell us where their friends are..."

Navarion's voice trailed off in order to let them draw the natural conclusion. When they only furrowed their brows in confusion, he furrowed his the same way in even more confusion. Wendigo looked at him as though the answer was honestly lost on the group.

"...we can scare them into betraying their friends!" Navarion exclaimed, flabbergasted that none of the five locals appeared to understand what he was trying to explain.

A toad hopped by the whole group, sat and stared for a moment and then ate a fly before hopping away. It was as if nature itself wanted to demonstrate how little the Raventusk understood about dealing with people who wouldn't fight openly like they preferred to. Breaking the silence, Wendigo grabbed the corpse by one hand and threw the hefty looking decapitated human about thirty yards up the road toward the bazaar.

"Let's crucify him in the market so everybody can see!" the man bellowed, to the upsurge of cheering from his compatriots. He looked like he was only one step away from urinating on the dirt road to mark his territory.

The five locals stomped up the street like a bunch of half-giants on the prowl, leaving Navarion dumbstruck next to Hogar, Nephentha and Vegnus. He turned to look at his dwarven boss, only to find a knowing look that told him that no translation would be necessary.

Navarion sighed and shrugged his shoulders. Educating these people would be a lot tougher than he had expected.


	6. The Bonfire

The days ticked by somewhat monotonously at the overcrowded, slowly developing city. In a way, Navarion almost envied the actual work crew. The twelve Steamwheedle teamsters spent their days not only working on the construction projects for Raventusk City's new economic zone, but they also interacted with the locals while teaching them how to construct and maintain such facilities themselves. Most of the buildings of the forest trolls were simply fallen trees hacked until they were hollow, thatched surfaces or timber and rock strung together with thick rope made from the fur of the long haired cattle in the region. Quite a few of the locals hadn't even seen a nail before the cartel crew arrived.

All of that in spite of the tribe's membership in the Horde. As the half night elf, half jungle troll man watched the midway progress of the first few docks at the shore, he understood why his parents had both left the respective factions their peoples had joined. Politics was dirty business, and that one of the two most powerful factions on Azeroth ignored a people who had defied all their neighbors in joining, he couldn't help but feel resentment and disgust at all the arrogant members of either faction for looking down on those associated with the neutral cartel organizations like his family and community. They might do what they did for money, true, but at least they got things done.

The wooden platform he stood on at the edge of the steep banks of the shore as he looked across the ocean didn't seem to serve much of a purpose. At least it gave him a good view of the work, he thought, as about half of the crew members directed rapidly learning locals numbering about three times that many. Just like his father had described to him when lamenting about his race, it had taken the locals time to understand that muscling everything around wasn't the most effective means of construction. Pulleys, wedges and gears were largely unknown to the Raventusk, and many of them scoffed at the tools as implements of the weak at first. Why use a rope and pulley to move lumber when two of their people were strong enough to carry a sizable felled tree?

The answer revealed itself to them in the increased work rate, and the tribespeople quickly went from mocking to thankful for the skills the crew members passed on to them. On that particular afternoon before Navarion's shift even started, he felt a certain sense of satisfaction and how quickly the locals understood construction of waterborne facilities. They had put together a barge under the supervision of the crew members and used long poles to carefully direct it to the end of the incomplete dock. Beams formed a ceiling, supported at the four corners of the barge. A pulley at the central point where the beams met held what appeared to be some sort of boulder used for pounding the supporting pillars of the dock into the seabed below. Being half night elf, Navarion was used to seeing buildings grown rather than built - the goblin buildings in Ratchet had existed since before he was born - and he knew nothing of construction. Possibly even less than the locals, now that they had been learning from the best. But when he saw how diligently the tribespeople pounded the pillars into the bottom of the shallows and then dove into the water unquestioningly to test that the base was sturdy enough, his pulse raced knowing that he was a part of helping people directly rather than simply cutting through waves of undead Scourge.

He barely even noticed when Hogar, still on duty, walked up next to him to watch the building of the dock as well. The weathered Orc veteran took a deep breath of the ocean air and folded his arms, like always looking as if he'd achieved an inner peace most people assumed to be a fairytale.

"Tell me what's changed," Hogar said while remaining fixated on the dock construction.

Mulling it over, the young man tried to think of an answer to what he assumed to be a riddle before remembering Hogar's advice the last time he asked such a question over a week ago. Not wanting to over analyze again, Navarion just answered with whatever came to his mind first.

"The people have changed," he said confidently despite not quite knowing if that's what Hogar had wanted to hear. "They realize that they can make a positive change if they try."

Perhaps the second part had been a bit much, but Hogar smiled regardless. Out of nowhere, he produced his pipe and a match that he lit against the leather rash guard beneath his arcanite hauberk. The familiar scent of tobacco and cloves filled the air as he puffed, and the two of them spent some time watching the dock near completion board by board. Navarion wondered if his attempts at seeking adventure had misled him. He left home due to wanderlust and anxiety over feeling too domesticated, yet the raids and heroic feats with his now dissolved guild ultimately left him feeling empty inside and without purpose in life. The Raventusk were uncouth, uneducated and unrefined and yet they were far happier than him.

All in all, the city wasn't a bad place to hang around. When moonrise began to approach, he made a decision.

"I think I'll make a positive change of my own," he told Hogar as he left for the camp to don his armor a bit early. The Orc nodded without looking at him, puffing on his pipe, enjoying the view and not really searching for potential bandits.

Ka'cha and Sharkasa were the two girls, and the two boys were Serju and Taran. He had barely recognized the four children from the day he'd walked into the city, and they only remembered him due to his glowing silver eyes. Even though they'd never seen a person of his exact body type and complexion before, their hyperactive nature caused them not to notice much of what was going on around them. Like the adult locals, however, they learned quickly.

Sharkasa used the forked stick she'd fashioned to lift a few rotten banana peels and carefully place them in the wheelbarrow Taran was pushing along. None of them fooled around and tried to fling garbage at each other, displaying surprising discipline for young people growing up in a society that didn't emphasize organization.

"It smells so nasty!" Taran remarked, pinching his nostrils closed.

Thinking very little before he responded, Navarion felt grateful for the unintentional lessons in Zandali. The amount of speaking he did as the group's cultural ambassador had been great practice, and he was almost conversational by that point. "It smells bad now, but when we finish cleaning up the residential area, you all get to live and sleep in a place that won't smell anymore."

Each of the two boys pushed a wheelbarrow full of garbage the two girls picked up with more of the long forked sticks. It was disgusting business to be fair; the locals had a tendency to throw their refuse out into the street, and attempts to explain why littering was bad for health and the environment fell on deaf ears. Showing them the positive results were what the young man intended on, and the responses from the adults sitting around showed that the effort was appreciated.

Two women weaving mats on a porch of pounding earth in front of their hut glanced at the outsider and four children approaching their property suspiciously at first. Their weaving slowed down while Navarion directed the children to work together at lifting up half of a goat carcass and some wood chips that had all formed a pile against one side of the hut. When they moved to the next hut without asking for money, the two women appeared shocked.

"Thanks, stranger," the older of the two said, her otherwise beautiful features moving in a way he found unpleasant due to her eyebrow piercings.

He nudged Taran so the lad would be the one to address the adults. "You're welcome, auntie. Everybody has to help keep things clean."

More shock wrote itself across the women's faces as the party of five started cleaning up the garbage next to an abandoned hut as well, working their way in and out of the narrow, uneven, disorganized paths in between all the dwellings. They worked until after the moon had risen and most of that specific neighborhood in the city of mostly twitched mud and wood dwellings began to retire for a good night's rest. They hadn't quite finished all the huts in that area, but the children had worked enough.

Navarion paid each of them a bit of copper as they wiped the sweat away. "You guys are doing great work for your community. Stuff like this makes a difference, I guarantee that."

Sharkasa, the more precocious of the four children, flipped her coin up in the air and caught it in her hand as he spoke. "Do they throw garbage in the streets where you're from, Hearthglen?" she asked with a legitimate curiosity.

"No, never. We have punishments if you do that," he chuckled while patting her on the head against her wishes. She reminded him quite a bit of his very obnoxious but well meaning youngest sister, Sharimara. "We keep our garbage in wooden boxes, and we pay a few men each weak to come through on a cart with a donkey and take the trash for us and dump it in a sinkhole outside of the city. That way, the streets don't smell even during the summer."

"I hope that one day our streets don't smell anymore," the little girl who thought she was a grown woman wished out loud, pouting at the piles of garbage they didn't have time to reach.

Navarion took both wheelbarrows himself to dispose of them in a ditch he found in one of the woodlands that fell within the spacious walled city. "That day will come soon, and you'll be a part of it, little captain. Run along now, your parents will be wondering where you are."

He watched her as she darted away, winding around the huts after the other children instead of just walking directly home. Before he had time to angle the wheelbarrows using one hand each, another one of the oversized locals shambled over to him.

"People notice how you've been trying to improve things," Wendigo said while reaching to help with one of the wheelbarrows.

Navarion hesitated in disbelief at first. One of the reasons he had to recruit the children was that the locals, like most trolls, viewed garbage collection as beneath them and refused to do it even if it meant living in garbage. Part of the city's unemployment problem, it seemed, was that many of the tribespeople - especially the men - consciously refused jobs if they felt the tasks were demeaning or the wage was slightly less than what they felt their ego demanded. It was arrogant to the point of idiocy considering their poverty, but that only served to make the reasons for their poverty even more apparent.

That in mind, Navarion gladly allowed the leader of what could be considered a very primitive form of a union for the fishermen and pearl divers to help him as they pushed the stinky wheelbarrows to the woods. "I appreciate it," he conceded.

"No, we appreciate what you all are doing," the local conceded himself. "Your operation is helping us in more ways than your group or our people are aware of right now." Since that specific neighborhood stood at the edge of the settled area, it didn't take long before they entered the woods. "Listen, if I tell you something, do you promise not to tell the rest of your crew?"

Assuming he was about to receive some type of complaint, Navarion stiffened and focused on the ditch where he had already been throwing his own camp's refuse for the past week. "Go ahead."

Wendigo grinned, obviously not preparing to say what Navarion had expected. "Some of us might have a dance tonight. Live music, bonfire, the whole bit. But we kind of don't want any of the short people hanging around."

Navarion understood the euphemism to be a thinly veiled racial slur for his companions among the cartel crew, and felt a mild wave of distaste wash over him, as a biracial family, all of the Hearthglens absolutely abhorred prejudice. Regardless, he knew that he was supposed to be the link between the cartel and the locals, and rejecting the invitation or appearing recalcitrant wouldn't do them any good. He didn't have much choice.

"I'm definitely down," he said despite knowing he should have been patrolling for potential bandits or other infiltrators. "Ranger Summerdrake should be able to handle monitoring the city walls on her own, and we can leave the wheelbarrows here."

"Excellent, the more the merrier," Wendigo beamed as he led the way back through the neighborhood. "The bonfire has probably already started down at the beach. It's on the shore beneath this sandy embankment, so nobody will hear or see and complain that it's disturbing the peace or some shit like that."

They took their time, Wendigo talking up how awesome their dance parties are the entire way. Navarion had been raised in a household that absolutely banned drugs, alcohol and tobacco for all its members, but one he had left home he quickly hit the bar scene in whatever town his lost guild's missions brought them to. He'd been to plenty of parties before and doubted that the rather rustic, backwater locals would be able to impress him.

But as they finally reached the shoreline in the dark, the bonfire lit up a scene that said otherwise.

All around, a relatively young crowd sat on logs laid out as benches in the sand, talking and drinking what was probably nasty yet potent home brew. The bonfire was huge, burning up a pile of logs shaped like a teepee that created almost no smoke and just enough fire to provide light for those who didn't have night vision like Navarion did (read: everyone there). Perhaps thirty young people were talking, playing drinking games and generally socializing in a much more subdued manner than they did during the day. Alcohol seemed to regulate their behavior a bit rather than leading them to do crazy things as it did with elves, humans or orcs. Several people sitting off to the side were already beating on some tribal drums and blowing on wind instruments he'd never seen before, and a handful of couples had already started dancing.

"That's a decent sized crowd considering how low the noise level is," Navarion observed as the two of them arrived at the edge of some of the standing partygoers. Another half dozen people arrived from the opposite direction just as he finished the sentence, interspersing with the crowd.

"This is how we relax, man," Wendigo hummed, already enraptured by the slow but steady drumbeats. "We aren't interested in the hard and fast life people have in other cities. I've heard about places like Orgrimmar and Silvermoon. People are so busy all the time that when they finally do get to unwind, they go overboard. We take things easy all the time here. No restrictions but no foolishness."

"I see what you mean," Navarion said absentmindedly as he watched how slow the tribespeople danced in contrast to their unpredictable movements at the marketplace or when upset about something.

A stranger walked by pouring the home brew for people for free, and Navarion grabbed two and handed one to Wendigo, who sipped slowly rather than chugging it like Vegnus would have. Very little was said by anyone, and the normally loud mouthed, aggressive forest trolls finally seemed to be in an environment where they became a little more demure.

Aside from their dancing, that is.

Navarion watched and observed, not wanting to commit any social gaffes. Much like jungle trolls, their movements while dancing were slow yet focused, unpracticed yet fluid and natural. The hips were more important than the shoulders, though no part of the body stood still, even the head. They were not in a trance as some peoples tended to fall into while dancing, yet they seemed to enjoy the music and the atmosphere greatly. Even when shuffling their feet, they all danced with such grace that no sand was kicked up, and the almost instinctual flow of each person almost reminded him of what it felt like to watch one of those lava lamp things exported from Gadgetzan.

The raunchiness of the slow movements reminded him the most of jungle trolls. Despite the fact that troll men rivaled even centaurs in terms of protective jealousy for their women, they took no issue with the jaw dropping gyrations of their dance partners. No woman danced with more than one man, Navarion noticed as he and Wendigo watched, and he reminded himself not to try to dance with any female he'd already seen with another man.

A group of women passed by, one of them slowing down to take a closer look at Wendigo. Navarion's rather domesticated father had told him that trolls could be a bit blunt, but the exchange he witnessed next left him unsure of whether to laugh or toss back another drink and go on the prowl himself.

Wendigo grinned without pretense at the woman as she smirked at him from behind the war paint that covered her face, limbs and entire body. "Like what you see, dearie?" he asked in an almost causal voice without any suggestive overtones.

The woman's burlap top hung from her shoulders and was loose at the bottom, barely covering what needed to be covered. A strong breeze would a have given everyone a round a little show, and like the other women there she arched her back far more than even a draenei female would when trying to grab a man's attention.

"I like," she said without elaborating. The exchange was almost comical in how over the top direct it was.

"Nice rack."

"Ack!" Navarion choked on his drink, utterly shocked at Wendigo's comment.

Even for a culture so open, Navarion would have expected a comment so terse to result in the young lady reacting indignantly or even giving Wendigo a slap in retaliation. It was audacious, unrestrained and totally lacking in the sort of flirtatious subtleties that made romantic trysts so magical and special in the first place. For sure, Navarion thought, she would take offense at Wendigo's extreme forward ness.

"Nice package."

After only five lines between them and no further introduction, the brand new couple promptly walked away hand in hand, leaving the violet-blue outsider astounded at what he had just seen. It was so unsophisticated, so casual that it almost appeared devoid of the back and forth game that he had always understood intimacy to be. Wendigo gave a thumbs up to Navarion behind his back and then pointed to the crowd, encouraging his new friend to find someone of his own. The fisherman and his newfound girlfriend disappeared into the crowd, wandering off to somewhere more private rather than toward the bonfire where even more people had started dirty dancing.

Left on his own, Navarion laughed first and chugged his drink second, almost feeling disappointed at how easy it seemed to meet women at such a place. He scanned the crowd, noticing that while some of the men danced with more than one woman, they never danced alone, unlike the women, some of whom danced on their own or in groups of friends. That, at least, felt a little familiar, and he had to realize he'd need to meet someone before hitting the soft sand that what the dance floor. He could always just walk up to any random female on her own and start dancing without a word; if the exchange he'd just witnessed gave any indication, it would probably work. He didn't want that, though. He wanted to work at least a little bit.

Two burgundy eyes caught his attention from across the circle of people drinking, talking and watching, bringing back memories of the first day he'd entered the city.

She stood in a group of her friends, pointing to him surreptitiously but wildly pretending she hadn't seen him when he looked. Immediately he felt drawn to her once more, reveling in the smile she tried to fight when she realized from the corner of her eye that he was looking back. He turned to the side and rested one elbow on a palm tree on the shore, using his own peripheral vision as he often did. She was wearing a loincloth and top made from fur, leaving slightly more to the imagination than most of the other women. She wore sandals, like a handful of the ladies, and her hair once again seemed to be unnaturally bouncy. It was dark green, perhaps a shade darker than her hide, like emeralds against the leaves of one of the palm tree fronds. Her long, regal nose arched downward and he wondered how she would react if he kissed the bridge of it.

He noticed the conversation among the group of women across the circle pause right before her friends walked away. She looked at him again as they nudged her forward, her hesitation causing the muscles in his face to curl into a grin more strongly than he could resist. She stood with one hand on her hip, her body language still open like that of most troll women despite the nervousness he could sense from her even across the crowd. Running his hand through his Mohawk to make sure it was still upright, Navarion turned and sauntered just behind the row of people clapping, drinking and generally watching the sandy dance floor. He could notice her tossing her head back, probably suppressing a giggle as she slowly moved around the circle as well. The conversations had grown a bit louder by that time, and the crowd was just thick enough that he had to walk carefully - there was surprisingly no fighting at all despite the race's territorial nature, but he didn't want to test that by stepping on anybody's uncovered toes. Nobody seemed to mind or notice as he moved around them, and he wasn't the only one trying to move through the crowd either.

Her path crossed his at the exact time when he predicted it would; he'd played the game enough times to estimate from experience how soon a woman could reach him depending on the crowding and her level of nervousness. They continued to walk, not on a collision course but close enough to brush up against each other again, and he slowed down to check her out a little more obviously. She turned as well, smiling a little too much, and he could tell she was a bit younger than him by her relative shyness compared to the other tribeswomen. He stopped walking and she did too, neither of them facing each other all the way as he looked her up and down.

Back in Ratchet or among elves, humans or orcs, very obviously raking her body with his eyes would possibly embarrass her and scandalize those around them. He hadn't expected such an outward display to be as thrilling as it was; part of the fun of meeting women was the challenge. The hunt. The way Wendigo had just met a stranger turned him off a little bit. But this young woman who had captivated him in the open air market on his first day in the city behaved a little differently. There would be a chase yet.

"I remember-"

"Shhh," she whispered with a finger on his lips. He could feel every nerve ending in both of them as well as his chin tingle under the heat of her finger's smoothness, completely without callous or blemish, and made no effort to remove it.

When he allowed her to rest her finger on his lips, her eyes grew wide as if she didn't know what to do. A wide grin curled once more over the ring around one of her tusks, and up close he could tell that she had carved old Zandali runes into it. The similarities between archaic, runic writing of both Zandali and elven were fascinating, making the common descent of both his parents' races even more apparent. He felt when looking at her as if he were gazing into the past, at some sort of primeval era where life would have been simpler and more beautiful. The beat of the tribal drums echoed into the night and sent vibrations across the ground and up into the soles of his feet. Something instinctual spoke to him when surrounding by the rhythm, the bonfire, the tusks, the war paint, everything. Some sort of undeniable voice deep within that hadn't even been awakened when he'd courted the more civilized Darkspear women in the Barrens.

Navarion listened to the voice, and felt rather than thought. Giving her no warning, he grabbed her wrist and pulled her body flush against his, feeling her bosom rise and press against his chest when she gasped. Even though she wasn't dainty in the least, her arm went weak in his grasp. He could feel her breath against his cheeks as his glowing silver eyes burned into her in a way he knew she'd likely never seen before. Just as she'd prevented him from speaking, he pulled her away from the crowd and off to the side before she had a chance to talk, preferring to let instinct lead them instead.

Outside of the main circle around the bonfire, there were only a handful of perhaps shier couples dancing. The circle of partygoers and onlookers blocked half the light of the bonfire, creating a surreal scene of darkness mixed with orange glow on the soft sand. The impenetrable wall of people remained fixated on the main body of dancers and musicians in the center, taking no notice of or interest in the three or four couples who had picked scattered Palm trees to dance behind.

Once they reached a palm tree of their own - only a few yards from the circle, far enough for privacy but close enough that she wouldn't feel endangered by him - he lifted her wrist and spun her around. This time he heard her giggle audibly as he held her smaller finger gingerly in his pinky and ring finger, marveling at how much easier and lighter hearted the interaction felt in relation to what he had grown used to. She didn't hesitate or freeze up when he held her hand in the air and pulled back, feeling her back against his chest. Almost immediately, her hips began to sway to the music as if she were being controlled, and he fell into step with her.

Her hips bucked back, but not so much as they shuffled across the sand. Her moves were more conservative than most of the women he'd seen by the bonfire. Perhaps they were familiar with their partners due to living in the same city, or perhaps he kept this woman a little on edge because he was an outsider, one both strange yet exotic to them. He worked it to his advantage, leaning in to her just enough for one of his tusks to brush against the length of her ear. She sighed deeply enough that her lips parted at the middle, and when she leaned in to him he could see the silver glow of his own eyes on her cheeks.

She smelled like earth and ozone. The scent was entirely different from the expensive perfumes of women of the more refined peoples of Azeroth, and that made it all the more alluring. Different. Natural. Reaching one hand behind her head, she tried to find the back of his and pull him in closer, but seemed to think twice and lowered her hand. When he leaned in anyway and brushed her other ear with one of his tusks, and she folded in on herself smiling, he knew she was his.

She squeezed his hand. It was the same hand he had first spun her around by. Squeezing hers right back, he twirled her outward from him, intent on holding her face to face with him when he twirled her back.

But as they stood, arms outstretched, her fingers lost their grip on his among the chatters and giggles of several female voices.

He shouldn't have let his guard down like that; he was supposed to be on patrol. Whirling around to see who was there, he spied her group of friends from earlier, slowly walking away as they made eyes at him. Another familiar voice joined theirs and when he spun back to catch the hand of his dancing partner again, she was gone, pulled away by the same group of friends who had urged her to join him initially.

Never the one to pine or tag along or beg, Navarion leaned one elbow against the palm tree as he noticed the burgundy eyed beauty in the center of her friends, reluctantly moving along as they dragged her against her will. She took it in a stride, chiding them good heartedly as she looked back at him, trying to catch one more glimpse of him as she and her friends disappeared back into town.

He remained at that palm tree longer than he normally would have. He felt no anger or slight at the behavior of her friends. If anything, it attracted him even more. For the time being, he just listened to the drumbeats barely out of range of the bonfire, thanking the Goddess that he'd left the Argent Crusade camp and taken up the mission at this city. He spent a long time wondering when he'd find the woman with no name again.


	7. Infiltration

Navarion gathered the children close as they stood behind the fence, watching the smelter with all the other locals. "There it is, kids," he sighed in appreciation as they all oohed and awed. "There's the first few coins created by your city's first official Horde mint."

The workshop was partially open air, likely to help with the cooling process. It had four pillars and a roof, but no walls, thus more easily enabling the locals to marvel at a technology that had seemed alien to them only a month before. That most of the skilled workers were recently trained local tribespeople working under only one cartel supervisor made it all the more impressive.

The smelter itself was huge, assembled using pre-made parts hauled in by the crew. The copper ore could be mined locally, and the Raventusk already knew how to swing a pickax. All they needed help with was the facility itself and a bit of direction on how to heat the copper ore enough to cut and mold it. Their large, three fingered hands weren't as nimble as those of other races - troll hands seemed designed for pure grip strength, elf and human hands for pure dexterity and Orc hands somewhere in between - but by working slowly and carefully, they had proven themselves as capable redsmiths.

The children never ceased in their questions. How did smelting work, what was a forge, what's the difference between a blacksmith, a redsmith and a whitesmith, why do copper coins taste so good, how long does it take to finish mining a mine, what does spaghetti look like. And even when he made up the answers or just said he didn't know, they didn't cease to be amazed.

"Mister Navarion, what's that?" Taran asked while pointing toward a contraption that looked like a vice with no crank.

"That's where they force the heated copper into the shape of coins," he surmised, having no way of knowing if that was actually true.

"Will they make coins forever?" Sharkasa asked.

"Well, that's complicated," Navarion replied while moving aside for more locals that had come to observe the first coins being minted. The smelter was situated on the northeast edge of town near the docks and beyond the residential areas. The tribal elders intended the spot for an industrial area, and permission to mint a fixed amount of coinage had been granted through a treasurer at Skulk Rock. Not that the children would understand any of that. "They will make as many coins as the people need."

"But we always need to buy more things, Mister Navarion!" Ka'cha protested. She was usually more subdued than the other little girl, Sharkasa, but Ka'cha took special interest in making money. "So we'll need to make new coins every day to buy more things!"

This was a topic the biracial young man was familiar with. Tiondel, his youngest brother, was a history and economics buff despite his rather rough nature, and he often talked everyone else's ears off about the two topics. Navarion was prepared.

"It isn't so simple. When you create coins, they're in use by the people. That's the economy. Every time you buy something with coins, the person you bought from has those coins to spend. And they buy, and the person they bought from buys, and so on. It's a big circle, which is why we say the money goes into circulation."

Serju, one of the two boys, looked entirely confused. "So you can use money more than once?"

"Yes, of course you can," Navarion chuckled heartily. "That's why money is made from metal. I mean, if money was printed on paper, it would never ever work. Ever."

Ka'cha stared in awe as another batch of copper coins was pressed out of the vice like device under the auspices of the Steamwheedle laborer, one of the two middle aged human men who understood heavy industry well, and Taiji, the older female elder from the longhouse the day the cartel caravan had arrived. The girl's eyes shone even when there was no light to reflect off of them, as if she were totally enraptured.

"I want to be an investment banker."

All three of her friends laughed at her, but Navarion pulled the small child close. "Hey, hey, knock it off. She very well could be the one to out your city on the map one day."

He had intended for the light scolding to reassure Ka'cha, but instead the girl looked dismayed. "You mean maps don't already include Raventusk City on them?" she asked, her shining eyes filled with concern.

"No. I mean, yes, maps do include Raventusk. It was just a figure of speech. Meaning..."

Navarion thought for a moment, trying to find the right words in Zandali. He'd spent nearly a month at the city and his fluency improved rapidly, but without a dictionary or even a library there, it was difficult to pick up new words. The fact that the locals were a hodgepodge of older speakers of Zandali exclusively, adult speakers of poor Zandali and Low Common and young speakers of Common only didn't help his lexical or grammatical accuracy. "It means that one day, you might make a lot of money for your city, and people might even keep their money here since it's a safe place far from the politics of the world."

The children all appeared to understand the concept well, but Serju seemed determined to cause trouble. "Ka'cha wants to draw maps on old napkins and sell them to gnomes."

"No, that's not what I said!" Ka'cha cried, and Serju had already fled in anticipation of her removing her shark tooth necklace and whipping him with it.

Two of the children ran off, leaving Sharkasa and Taran to amble away with Navarion as the crowd dispersed after the last coins had been minted for the day. Some of the locals milled about, chatting under the fading light of dusk while others hurried back to their huts. For a society that cared little for rules and schedules, the forest trolls did appear to sleep rather regularly: moonset, wake up; moonrise, go to bed. It was pretty much the opposite of his mother's race, the night elves, but it was one of the few aspects of Raventusk City that did appear somewhat regulated.

Sharkasa and Taran had begun whispering whatever children whisper about - Navarion honestly couldn't remember, he'd been gone from home for so long - and he gave them both pats on the head. "Hey kids, it's getting dark. Your parents are probably looking for you..."

He smiled. From behind the smelter platform, two burgundy eyes caught his silvers momentarily. It had been more than two weeks since his dance with the relatively dainty tribeswoman by the bonfire, and since then he'd only seen her from afar and only for seconds at a time; having the night shift for patrol while the cartel crew directed construction and development operations during the day, Navarion socialized little with the locals save for an hour or so before they all slept and then an hour or so after everyone was up. The schedule was fine by him: his biology allowed him to easily adapt to either a daytime or nighttime schedule, and due to the nature of his eyes, he preferred to be awake at night anyway.

Still, he had dreamed about that dance a few times, and on lonely nights when he followed potential bandit tracks that always turned out to belong to goats or calves, he could almost smell her once more if he closed his eyes.

Leaning against one of the pillars of the work area, she stood about ten years away from him. In front of her was Taiji, and the two of them appeared to be engaged in light conversation. The elder female wore a toga of beaver fur that appeared lightweight but covered more than what most of the local women wore, and she was one of the few who wore sandals on her feet. The fetishes hanging from her necklace and her ear piercings insinuated that she may have been a witch doctor, as many of the leaders of troll societies - whether they were forest, jungle, ice, sand or dark - tended to be. Taiji reached out to hold the burgundy eyed youngblood's hand as she spoke, and it was only then that Navarion noticed they both had the same sort of long, regal nose. Even through the war paint they both donned, the similarities between their features were apparent. It was almost as if...

"Mister Navarion, can we borrow some money to buy strawberries before the stalls close?" Taran asked innocently. "We'll pay you back as soon as we get paid for collecting the garbage tomorrow."

Snapped back to reality, he looked down at the two hungry children. They were cute and he wanted to make them happy, but he didn't want to teach them to mooch or beg. Just like his father had said, settlements where the people were predominantly trolls had enough of a problem with laziness and intentional unemployment as it was. They'd have to earn their money for their own good, he thought.

"Considering that I'm the one who pays you, I'll consider this a cash advance," he chuckled while handing the two of them half the money he usually paid them for cleaning up around the city. "That means I give you part of your wage now and the rest of it when you finish the job. That's an honor a bond of trust, so don't ever fail to show up for work if you took an advance."

"Oh, thanks mister! We'll be early for work tomorrow for sure. And we won't let you down!" Sharkasa beamed as she gladly accepted the money.

The two of them scampered off without saying goodbye, disappearing among the storage huts and and other workshops of the future industrial area as they ran back to the commercial district unattended. Although Navarion never particularly cared for children, he didn't mind these four. As the oldest son in his family, he constantly had to take care of his younger siblings. His oldest sister, Anathil, was a hypochondriac and their parents indulged her endlessly due to some real, actual illnesses she suffered from as a newborn. Consequently, Navarion greatly disliked being put upon for childcare. In this case, however, the four local children who had run by him on his first day there had grown on him. Perhaps the fact that he only dealt with them for an hour or two a day made it easier. Goddess knows he wasn't ready for children of his own yet. Romance, however, was something he'd known since he hit puberty. Speaking of which...

The opposite end of the work area had emptied out while he watched Sharkasa and Taran run off, and there were only a handful of local workers nearby. At some point, Taiji and the burgundy eyed beauty whom he assumed to be her daughter or niece must have joined the crowds going home for sleep. Left to his own machinations as he technically entered the time period of his shift on patrol, Navarion sighed in a combination of both contentment and wistfulness. He quite enjoyed the chase, but after two weeks of ignoring the passes made at him by other women, he did find his patience running out. In a city of ten thousand, there was no shortage of gorgeous, gigantic women. He'd never been surrounded by so many women that were his type, and in spite of his disappointment at the lack of challenge in pursuing most Raventusk women, his eyes had begun to wander.

As he walked back toward the main part of the city, his eyes wandered over to a certain other female. Not one he would ever consider a potential object of his affections, but certainly a respected and trusted new ally.

"She already left," Jalinde, the representative of the Hinterlands high elves, chortled in Common while leaning against a stray apple tree near the beginning of the settled area. Her dark green leather armor, cape and cowl were perfectly suited to the terrain in either night or day, and he was always glad to share the night shift with her backing him up. "In case you were wondering."

Navarion was not in the least bit bashful or shy, and he prided himself on being blunt, direct and unconcerned with the opinions of others. There was something about Jalinde, however, that did cause him to experience a measure of meekness around her, in spite of her rather open and humble nature. He shrugged, trying to play the episode off as if he had been looking for something else.

"Yes, I guess little Ka'cha had places to go and things to do," he laughed nonchalantly without making eye contact.

It would have fooled even Nephentha or Vegnus, perhaps, but not the weathered elven ranger. "You're a talented actor," she complimented him as she fell into step and easily kept up despite his much longer strides. "Unlucky for you, I'm a master of disguise myself."

He smirked, deciding to take a swipe if his newfound friend wanted to play it that way. "It isn't like you to brag about yourself like that," he taunted lightly. When he garnered a sincere frown from her, he felt both victorious and contrite. "I do prefer going on patrol with you, by the way. I wish we'd had some of your class of adventurer in my old guild."

The earlier jab taken in a stride, Jalinde smirked at him before wiping the expression from her face. She said very little to anyone but Vegnus and Traska, but on the few occasions when they patrolled in tandem rather than separately she did seem to enjoy his company. "And what about Nepha and Hogar?" Jalinde asked curiously.

"Amazing, both of them. Hogar is an old friend of my father's, you know."

"He may have mentioned something about that. They worked at some sort of a rock quarry together?"

He grinned knowingly. One part of his heritage had the tendency to blurt out overly personal information all the time, while the other part had the tendency of being restrained and guarded to the point of being unfriendly. Considering that this was an elf he was talking to, he let the latter part of his heritage reign and went for the course of discretion. "Yes, among other things...in a sense. But Hogar became a legend on the battlefield after that. And Nepha is a sea witch, like her mother. They can both smash enemy regiments apart at will. But for more subtle arts of tracking and capturing...well, let's just say they're both better off handling the day shift."

"The claws are out," Jalinde joked, sensing that Navarion meant it as an observation rather than a swipe at his family friends. "And what do you bring to the table as a...shadow hunter, is it? Like your father? You aren't a tracker, nor are you particularly stealthy."

"True, but one doesn't need to be stealthy if they can simply trap their prey. Did you notice the wards placed around the walls?"

The two of them had looped around the residential district on the south end of the settled area, and walked methodically near the woods. Given the nature of the discussion, it was apparent why they didn't need to be stealthy at the moment, and they took their time observing the few people running errands in the dark in between the huts, the handful of owls and rodents in the woods on the other side and the lookouts patrolling the city walls far off in the distance.

"The ones bearing turtle and snail shells with fel runes carved in them, yes. I'm assuming they're yours, and although I didn't go near them, I'm also assuming that those catch infiltrators?"

"Logical deduction on the spot, like a true ranger," he complimented, and she smirked once more as if finally realizing he was a flatterer. "My father was never big on wards, but he helped us learn the basics-"

"Us?"

"Me and Thanil, the oldest of the six Hearthglen kids," he explained as she whistled at the number. "Yes, a lot for a family with an elf for a mom, but that's a whole other story. The point is, our wards are 'smart,' so to speak. They sense intent, so you would be fine walking over one of mine, which form stasis traps. But bandits, hostiles...doesn't matter how tough they are. They're getting held down, and they won't get back up before they starve or dehydrate, not until someone who knows voodoo lets them up or somebody shoots the ward from afar."

"So you mostly do rounds checking if the wards caught anything?" she asked in a way that hinted she already knew the answer.

"That's what we're doing right here."

Jalinde looked up and realized that they had reached the first ward, nestled among the bushes near the far southern end of the city wall. It curved back toward the beach, and a few of the tree trunks strung together to form the wall ran all the way into the ocean. There was a small opening before them, covered by some bushes; quite inviting for the potential thief. The war looked unassuming enough, just a bundle of petrified wood branches and animal bone wrapped in preserved briarthorn vines. A carved shell from a tortoise hung from the top by a leather strap, almost resembling some sort of grave marker. The ward pulsed every few seconds, sending invisible waves through the ground that Navarion could sense but that he assumed Jalinde couldn't.

"I don't see anything here, but your placement of the trap is quite apt," she noticed, inspecting the end of the wall for any more potential gaps.

"I haven't caught anything yet, but then again, I don't think anything has been stolen since the locals nailed that last one to a cross in the market square." Navarion moved forward and Jalinde moved with him unquestioningly. "I planned on doing quick rounds of all the wards, if you wanted to take a look at their locations."

"Absolutely," she answered right away. That she seemed to enjoy having someone to patrol with so much didn't match with her intentional solitude some nights, and he assumed her to be rather moody. At her next question, however, he saw another, more mischevious side of her as well. "So how long ago was your breakup?" she asked as though it were a normal, non-nosy question.

His eyes widened, not so much in discomfort at the question and shock that she had been able to tell. "Wow...you're very direct tonight. You must have been influenced but he locals."

She shared his laugh, and continued to walk beside him comfortably as they passed a pair of axe throwers, a male and a female, ignoring their post as they sat together and whispered in the moonlight. Security was surprisingly lax among the forest trolls, probably due to the arrogance and condescension toward potential enemies Vegnus had once mentioned. When the next ward came into view behind a fencepost by the main gate, Jalinde tried again.

"It isn't obvious, you know. You're very talented at concealing the different aspects of your life from people not involved in them - another sign that even if you have tusks, you're very much an elf," she remarked as they both paused momentarily to watch the main gate hanging wide open while three axe throwers kicked a live, shrieking rabbit back and forth in a morally outrageous game of hackey sack while they completely ignored their post. "But I can tell that you're on the rebound. So how long ago was it?"

It felt like lately, he had a problem with grinning so wide that he couldn't help himself when faced with situations involved nervous energy. In this case, he felt a little exposed to someone he had to work with, and was largely left without an exit from the conversation that didn't involve him being needlessly rude. Chuckling at the situation, he decided to tell another living being for the first time.

"Just before I joined you guys at the lodge, actually," he explained while staring at the ground in front of them, sensing a sudden feeling of detachment from the drama of his own life. "She's with the Argent Crusade. We met while I was fighting alongside them as an irregular during the last Scourge invasion."

"So you served together, spent time in the camp, got to know each other over the long term," Jalinde surmised quietly, seeming very at ease considering the fact that they didn't know each other that well. And for reasons he didn't quite understand, that put Navarion at ease, too.

"Perceptive. We didn't really have a lot in common, in retrospect. It was just...time spent together. Plus compatibility."

"How could the two of you be compatible with each other if you don't have that much in common?" she asked, almost laughing at his statement.

Although he didn't feel irritated, he did feel challenged. Her reaction came off as shallow to him, and while he could tell that the high elf was much older than him by the behavior and attitude he'd observed over the past few weeks, he assumed her to be inexperienced romantically. "There are other types of compatibility, especially considering my situation. Physical compatability is just as important as mental. I can't exactly make things work with, say, a dwarf or a goblin. Meeting people that are compatible is hard, except in a place like this," he said while making a sweeping motion toward the still stirring locals herding cattle inside a crude excuse for a barn as they walked along the western wall.

"So was she...well, I've never seen any of the varieties of trolls in the Crusade, and the only night elves are men. I've never seen Tauren either. Was she...if you don't mind my asking, was she a draenei? A worgen?"

"Nope," he said with a shake of his head. "Human."

Jalinde looked incredulous. "You say it so casually that I assume you aren't acting, but...how?"

"Nobody in her family is small," Navarion beamed, the emotional sting of their breakup rapidly fading as he discussed it so clinically out loud. "They were all from the mountains, big for humans. Which made her awkward and shy since she stood out so much in the lowland village she grew up in, and she detests being stared at. But in the Crusade, she was appreciated. Some of the night elves and even an orc fellow competed for her affections."

"So you went in there, and you were different, exotic?"

"Nope again. Not even close. The Argent Crusade is almost as diverse as Steamwheedle. I'm as normal and nondescript as anybody else. I just happened to be assigned to her squad as one of the irregular supporting units." He continued to stare at the ground for a moment, ignoring her stare directed toward him. It was as if the ranger understood that he was coming to a realization at that moment, and left him alone until he spoke out loud again. "I guess that's why things didn't work out. We were just there together. In any other situation, neither of us would have been interested."

"It's for the best then, that the two of you split up," Jalinde replied, seeming to give the problems in his love life quite a bit of thought. "Just be careful while you're here. Throwing yourself right back on the market after a breakup can lead to trouble, especially since we're all leaving once this project is done."

Her words gave Navarion pause. It was a temporary job, yes, but he was still unsure of where he would go afterward. Those words reminded him only then that he had very little to return to at the Argent Crusade camp unless he and Rachel intended to get back together. He almost felt a bit guilty for how little his heart hurt when discussing their split. Shouldn't he feel sadder than this, he thought to himself. His thoughts rambled on for another moment before he noticed that Jalinde had fallen silent again, almost all the way to the north end of the city wall where it curved off toward the east, back in the direction of the ocean.

"Thanks for listening, and prodding," he mumbled to her. "I may not have considered some of these...this aspect of my own life otherwise."

"Thanks for telling," she replied without hesitation. "My reasons aren't entirely altruistic, you know."

He eyed her suspiciously. She obviously wasn't flirting, and aside from that, he didn't know what reason she would have to ask. She noticed his questioning stare, and smirked once more before obliging his curiosity.

"You remind me a lot of my son. He had issues coming off the rebound as well. If I watched you make the same mistake, I wouldn't forgive myself." Her tone was controlled but low, and it was the most emotion the ranger had shown the entire month. It felt flattering, to be able to affect someone in a non-lustful way for once, after spending so much time floating through life almost as a solpsist finding his way.

"He sounds like he's the kind of guy who enjoys getting into trouble, then."

"He was," she replied in a flat tone, her gaze fixed ahead.

It didn't take long for him to realize what she meant. Not only had she pried a bit into his personal life - and however beneficial it had been to him, it was still prying - but she had apparently been dropping her own emotional baggage onto him, rather than taking his on her shoulders. Though he still felt flattered, the revelation did create a measure of awkwardness.

"How did he pass, away, if you don't mind me asking?" he inquired, more intent on helping her perhaps release something pent up than actually interested in the cause itself.

"During the second war. Members of this very tribe killed him."

For a second he almost choked on his own saliva. "Holy shit," was all he could say.

"He died during war, in another era from this one. It was many decades ago. My people and theirs were enemies; now they aren't. The war is over. And..." Her voice trailed off. She didn't seem like she would break, but he could tell that Jalinde was also saying something out loud that she may not have ever told another living being before, though her feelings had been pent up for a far, far longer time than his. "And I guess that's why I'm here. To move on. To show that people can move on, and put conflicts behind them. My son happened to be a high elf. The enemy soldiers who killed him happened to be forest trolls. But neither of them represent an entire race of people. And that belief is what set me free after decades of my own racism."

Her words were inspiring despite the pain he heard behind them, and it took a bit of willpower to avoid breaking the normal elven rules of etiquette and give her a hug. He settled for a pat on her shoulder as they patrolled the north wall a little longer in silence, scanning the dark for any footprints or breaches in the wall. She recovered quickly, and before long they began discussing possible points of entry as if the conversation hadn't taken place. If she wanted to open the topic again, he would oblige. For the time being, he was content to let her nurse an obvious wound before delving into personal matters again.

The shouts in the dark alerted them that such a breach had occurred.

"About a hundred yards ahead," Jalinde whispered without prompting or direction. "Some of the locals and someone unfamiliar."

"They could somebody," Navarion whispered back, using his equally sensitive ears to spy the Zandali conversation ahead. "It's at one of my wards; it must have caught somebody."

The pair raced ahead, intent on capturing a potential bandit for questioning before a repeat of the incident a few days ago. Over the small hills and across the grass they ran, moving in and out of the handful of trees within the unnecessarily spacious walls of the city. The shouting became clearer but not louder, and Navarion felt relieved that the locals at least hadn't killed whoever they caught. Not yet.

The stasis trap pulses visibly across the ground, shining in the night as three tribespeople - a man and two women - surrounded a gnoll wearing bandit's clothing. The furry man was pinned firmly to the ground by the voodoo magic, one arm just barely out of the trap's range as it desperately grabbed blades of grass in a futile attempt to pull himself out of the circle of fel runes. The tribespeople stood around him in a circle empty handed, but that did little to soothe Navarion's nerves when he realized that the man was Wendigo. And that he had a half empty bottle of moonshine sticking out of his belt pouch.

"Wendigo, we got this!" Jalinde shouted in Common, already worried herself about what he might do.

Several more locals arrived and this time, Navarion felt greatly relieved when he saw the local elder Ven'jin and a very sleepy eyed but motivated Vegnus right next to him. The dwarf ran ahead, obviously also afraid of the catch being harmed, though the forest troll elder took his time, leaning on a walking stick he didn't need at all due to his legs being just fine. It took forever for him to get there, and Navarin almost wanted to slap the staff out of the old man's hands.

"I knew it! I knew we would catch one eventually!" Vegnus laughed triumphantly as he pushed past one of the females, whose sultry lips pulled back into an animalistic grin as she looked at the terrified gnoll, her otherwise pretty face looking terrifying instead.

"I'll talk! I'll talk! You told me if I talked, I'd be fine!" the gnoll snickered nervously at Wendigo, signaling that the quasi-union leader had actually been quite reasonable this time.

"Then talk!" the second of the two female axe throwers demanded, stomping her bare foot on the ground with a slight movement that still had enough force to cause the stones around her heel to fly up in the air.

"Who sent ye! And where are they hiding!" Vegnus asked quietly but urgently as he knelt down within the circle of fel runes, unaffected by the voodoo due to his good intention.

"Joachim Woodson! He and Harald Splitaxe have an entire bandit camp in the ravine! The ravine, you know, the one, please don't kill me!"

A few of the locals murmured, and Vegnus looked at Ven'jin in confusion. "Harald is one of my people...didn't he and Joachim die?"

Navarion had no clue who these people were, but he knew they must be bad news given how seriously Ven'jin spoke, sighing deeply as he considered his words. "The Forsaken firebombed their last hideout in tha Alterac Mountains. It's said that nobody got out alive."

"They did, I swear! I have no reason to make this up, just don't kill me!" the gnoll cackled, which was a sort of plea for their people. "Their base camp is at the ravine, they built a wall around it!"

"Who are those people?" Navarion whispered to Jalinde.

While she didn't share the shocked look of the others, she did speak in an equally serious tone. "Notorious bandits. They aren't simply rogues in the night. They're leeches. They work to keep small communities healthy and working so they can steal whatever the people earn. They aren't as violent as other bands, but they destroy communities much more quickly and irreversibly."

"Bullshit!" bellowed Wendigo, the flask of moonshine sloshing around in his belt pouch. "Ya makin' it up ta cover ya tracks."

The gnoll looked up at the looming, drunken forest troll not so much in fear as perplexity. Before he could speak, Wendigo reached down and grabbed the gnoll's single srm lying outside of the trap.

Panic immediately sent Navarion's pulse racing. The ward could sense intent, and Wendigo's obviously wasn't good. We're it himself, Vegnus or pretty much anyone else, they would have dragged the gnoll out of the trap harmlessly. But for someone aggressive, the ward wouldn't respond and the victim would remain pinned.

"Wait, don't pull him-"

Too late. Wendigo grabbed the gnoll's hand and pulled with what may have seemed like a light force to the forest troll, but his ape like strength caused the gnoll's arm, shoulder and part of his chest and hunchback to be ripped right off of his body like chunks being pulled from a large piece of cotton.

"Gadzooks!" Vegnus cried as he leapt away from the almost comically excessive amount of gore that exploded from the screaming gnoll's body.

"Oh! My God!" Jalinde gasped while putting her fists on her hips and walking away completely.

"Hearthglen, get over here!" Ven'jin shouted while already casting a hopeless healing spell on the hunk of flesh that was a gnoll up until a second ago.

Wendigo held the severed arm, shoulder and piece of torso in his hand gingerly as if he had simply plucked a rose from a bush by accident. That the blood splattered on his chest didn't even seem to bother him, and he literally covered his lips with a finger of his free hand like a confounded Orc peon. "Oops."

As if to punctuate the sheer idiocy of the entire scene, the two female axe throwers actually started eyeing Wendigo lustfully as if his drunken stupidity was some sort of an achievement. Ignoring him entirely, Navarion jumped over the river of gore and the dead bandit - whom he actually felt sorry for - to confer with the elder and the dwarf. Jalinde had literally just continued walking away until she disappeared out of sight.

"He said you know the ravine - the one where this hideout is," he addressed to them both.

"We think we know it, and if we don't, we can scout the area," Vegnus said hesitantly while looking up at Ven'jin. "That isn't the big problem though, laddie."

Ven'jin looked at the dead gnoll bandit, whose torso had been healed in a very weird, unnatural way despite the fact that the man died anyway. "Joachim and Harald died. Everybody has known that for at least a decade. This don't make no sense."

Even though he was an outsider, Navarion felt the need to speak up. They could still salvage this. "Elder, this bandit won't be back to report to whoever he's working for. That gives us time to scout and see how serious this bandit camp is. This wasn't a total loss."

"No, no it wasn't," Vegnus chimed in, tired but hopeful.

A few other locals looked to the elder, their expressions difficult to read under the red war paint but probably blank nonetheless. After a moment of consideration, Ven'jin spoke. "We're gonna have a meetin' first thing in tha mornin' tomorrow. No need ta rush inta this. Either way, within the next few days, we're marchin' out ta end this." He looked to Navarion and Vegnus, and it was clear the next part wasn't a question. "You're gonna be takin' tha lead on this. These people have been robbin' us for too long."


	8. Basic Instincts

Navarion flexed his hand and let the sickle blade extend from his bracer, admiring the way it gleamed in the moonlight. The bottom end slid into the groove on his gauntlet, stiffening his right arm and turning the weapon into an extension of his own body. Two axe throwers hid in the sandy ditch with him, the darkness provided by the earthen overhang concealing the op three otherwise unstealthy fighters. Across the flat area in front of the opal mine, he could see two shadowy figures approach while crouched low to the ground, flashes of forest green waving in the dark from both figures.

A minute later, Jalinde pulled her cowl down, revealing the dark green war paint the local women had applied to her face. Her scouting partner, a Raventusk female who worked as a huntress, knelt next to her.

"It's a large band," Jalinde whispered as the others leaned in. "Sixteen of them, all rogues. Their gear is cheap but they know what they're doing - they avoided the traps set by the locals as well as your wards, and they're moving without a sound."

"How much time do we have?" Navarion asked, feeling the nervous excitement of an impending skirmish.

"Two minutes or so. We already informed the guards on the other side of the entrance, and Hogar stayed awake with two more guards to watch the mint. I'll fire the first shot; nobody move until then," the high elven ranger instructed.

The forest trolls took no issue with a woman considered their traditional racial enemy doling out orders, and thankfully stayed put. The local woman who had functioned as Jalinde's constant foraging partner remained at her side, and their bond likely eased the high elf's acceptance among the locals. The two women stalked away, hiding themselves in another ditch the locals had dug on the beach. In the dark, even a rogue wasn't likely to notice if they weren't already aware the ditch had been dug behind a few palm trees. Despite Navarion's itching for another battle, he had to concede that this one probably wouldn't be fair even though they were outnumbered two to one.

It had only been two days since the meeting of the elders at the longhouse following the intrusion by a lone bandit. Since then, Jalinde and her partner had found the ravine in question one night, killing a few bandits and recovering their bodies in the process. Indeed, what the gnoll had claimed turned out to be true: the group of vagabonds had built a crude wall around an abandoned mine, and a ravine on the other side of the mountainside bore what appeared to be a back entrance. There weren't that many hostiles there - the entire camp held just over a hundred people - but they had packed themselves so tightly against the mine and built their crude wall with so many porticos for firing arrows at potential invaders that rooting them out would prove a laborious task. Supposedly the Raventusk tribal leaders had ruled that a seige would take place within days, but had remained tight lipped about it for fear of word leaving the city and working its way via local trade routes. One could never be sure how many spies would be wandering the highways if that Joachim Woodson person really was behind all the problems.

Navarion drew circles in the sand with a finger while waiting for the sixteen intruders to arrive at the opal mine - their likely target considering that it was down by the beach, while the mint was surrounded by other industrial buildings and would be more difficult to infiltrate unseen. If the bandits could escape with even one sack full of opals, they would both live like kings and damage the local economy. They didn't have positive identification of the leader yet, but according to Vegnus, the operation had the telltale signs of one of the supposedly deceased Woodson's operations. The bandits Jalinde had killed and brought back to the city were hired thugs, unskilled, poorly geared and probably clueless as to what exactly they were getting themselves in to. The problem was that Azeroth had no shortage of losers looking to live off the fat of society, and one of the specialties of Woodson was supposedly his networking abilities: he could attract recruits from Silvermoon all the way down to Boot Bay. His reputation alone was well known in the criminal underworld, apparently, and even if he weren't really alive, the rumors alone would serve as a magnet for footpads down on their luck or aspiring thieves looking to prove themselves.

Navarion's long ears twitched at the same time that those of the two axe throwers did, too. Everyone fell silent as the chain of sixteen crawling figures - some of them on their bellies - formed a train headed toward the closed and locked mine shaft. The opal vein wasn't too deep underground, and the entrance to the shaft was so close to the shore that even an unusually high tide could flood it. Obviously for such a valuable resource, however, the locals were willing to risk it. But that close location to the shoreline left the mine entirely out of the view of the city proper. The bandits took their time, not worried about being caught. They were mostly humans or high elves with a smattering of orcs and gnoll's mixed in, all of them wearing cheap leather jerkins and carrying nothing but daggers or clubs along with their empty burlap bags for loot.

The leader of the train, a human female with a shaved head, crawled precariously close to the mine entrance. In spite of their silence, Navarion could sense the tense impatience radiating from his two companions; the mine was a symbol of nationalistic pride for the Raventusk, and they viewed potential threats to it as a threat to their existence despite the fact that none of what they extracted had made it to the international market yet. They wouldn't wait forever.

Silently and without even a vibration of the bowstring in the air, Jalinde sent her first arrow at the group. Her ditch couldn't have been more than ten yards from the bandit train, and her angle allowed the arrow to fly unnoticed until it had already embedded itself in the leader's bald head at lightning speed. Like true rookies, the remaining fifteen bandits failed to react in a unified fashion: some of them shouted, some of them unsheathed their weapons and some of them simply froze.

"Now!" Jalinde yelled, and tomahawks were already flying by the time the bandits even had a chance to realize the arrows and the axes weren't coming from the same direction.

It was almost frustrating, in a way. The Raventusk guards each carried a strap over their backs with six extra tomahawks hanging, in addition to the two they all carried. They threw fast and accurately, but there was no way to safely jump into the fray without putting himself in the crossfire. Even when a coward amongst the bandits tried to run, tomahawks flew toward him from two different directions, precluding any intervention as the blood elf bandit's arms were cut off seamlessly by the two axe throwers.

"Leave some of them alive!" Navarion shouted, code switching to Zandali to better get the tribespeople's attention.

Although none of the locals had fallen into a berserker rage, they didn't heed the order, once again emphasizing that trolls of all varieties could probably achieve great things if only they would pay attention and think sometimes. By the time Navarion had found an opening to move toward the center of the beach in front of the mine shaft without putting himself at risk of being axed, the last few living bandits were already twitching from tomahawks that had simply missed their vital organs and hit shoulder blades or pelvic bones instead.

Three of them were clearly goners and possibly already dead, but simply experiencing breakdowns of their nervous systems like a headless chicken. One, however - an Orc whose collar bone and chest cavity had been cut in to - applied pressure to his wound and breathed slowly. He was clearly defeated and made no attempts to fight back, but his body seemed so resilient that he might live another minute or so if healed. His lungs had clearly been ripped apart and it would take an entire squadron of healers to patch him up quickly enough before he was beyond the reach of a resurrection spell, but at least he had the potential to be kept alive long enough to talk.

When Navarion cast a healing spell aimed at the man's chest, he actually looked about as resentful as one could be during such a painful time.

"Just let me die," the Orc man grumbled.

"At least go out in a little less pain," Navarion countered.

The Orc still looked unhappy with the healing and actually removed his hand from the gaping wound that could only partially be sutured. Blood continued to pour out onto his leather jerkin and from battlefield experience, Navarion estimated that much of the man's lungs and abdomen were filled by internal bleeding. He was an extraordinarily tough guy, and Navarion almost felt regret that the green rogue had chosen a life of crime instead of spying or infiltration for a legitimate organization. The tribespeople were busy kicking the corpses of the others around, and left Navarion to his own machinations with the rapidly fading Orc as though it were some kind of a catch. There wasn't much time.

"Who sent you?" he asked the dying man. "Redeem yourself at least a small bit. There are families here who depend on this mine. Who is targeting it?"

Whether it was purely the moral shaming or a simple sense that there was no reason not to confess, the Orc's face stiffene only for a split second before softening in not defeat so much as acceptance of his fate. "Joachim Woodson," the Orc gurgled via his last few breaths. "Him and Harald have a hundred of us up there plus plenty of weaponry. They've been hiring us from...all over..."

The Orc finally ran out of breath, and his eyelids began to drop as his forever sleep started to overtake him. As spiteful as Navarion felt toward the thieves for harming the livelihoods of a community that had grown on him, he felt a sense of gratitude at the confession as well. He grabbed the Orc's hand into a firm shake and held, and although the man no longer had the energy to look up, he nodded in affirmation as Navarion felt his soul slip away, far too quickly for resurrection due to the severity of the damage. Once he as sure the man was dead and safe from possible degradation by angry tribespeople, Navarion rose to meet Jalinde and her local hunting partner. The two women had spied his conversation and leaned forward, clearly interested in what the man had said.

"He's quoting a lower number; he says there are only a hundred of them, not more than that," Navarion explained quietly, ignoring the Raventusk guards ripping open the pockets and belt pouches of the fallen to search for gold. "But he claims it really is those Woodson and Splitaxe fellows who are behind all this."

"Did he say that he saw them, or that he just heard that's who he's working for?" the ranger asked suspiciously.

"He didn't have time to specify whether he met who he's working for or not. He just claimed that Woodson and Splitaxe are on a hiring spree."

Jalinde frowned, unsatisfied by the answer. "That still isn't definite confirmation, but even if it's just someone posing as them for the reputation, we need to treat this seriously. We need to speak to the elders first thing in the morning."

"Why not now?" he asked. "There was just a brazen raid by more than a dozen armed thieves directly on the mine. That's definitely a cause for alarm."

Jalinde's hunting partner, who understood Low Common but couldn't speak, interjected in Zandali. "There's nothing we can do now; not until daylight when more of our fighters are awake. Waking up the elders will only worry them at a time when it's too early to retaliate."

The answer made sense, and when Navarion only nodded silently, Jalinde seemed to understand what had been expressed despite the fact that she knew only a few words of Zandali. There really wasn't much they could do except divide the battle booty and hide the corpses from general view until the morning.

* * *

It only took a few minutes to convince the guards to calm down and return to their posts. Actually explaining to them why even the deceased of the enemy deserved a modicum of respect had little effect, but just letting them keep all the weapons and trinkets confiscated in return for leaving the bodies alone did the trick.

True to form, the forest trolls had mirrored the behavior of all trolls in that organizing a city council meeting literally took all day. Nobody was ever at their assigned posts at the assigned times, nobody answered their doors, everybody was busy and all matters were taken lightly no matter how serious they were. In spite of the natural athleticism of his father's race, the common stereotype of trolls being the laziest people on Azeroth proved itself mostly true. As much as Navarion enjoyed getting in touch with half his roots, he also had to admit that living in a third world area came with numerous frustrations he hadn't expected, having been raised in a rather wealthy trading port.

By the time all the necessary elders had been informed, and Vegnus had been informed that they'd been informed, and that Vegnus had informed the other adventurers, it was already dusk. Huddled in the communal long house that functioned as the city hall, Jalinde and her hunting partner took turns explaining what they witnessed at the bandit camp outside the ravine in question in two different languages and Navarion recounted his very brief exchange with one of the bandits. The elders asked numerous questions, many of them repeated, but in time the pieces of the story began to fall together. Thankfully, the thirty or so lower caste locals who had attended remained silent, and the meeting went without interruption if rather slowly.

Taiji, the elder female who appeared to be some sort of dual co ruler alongside Ven'jin - who Navarion assumed to be her mate in an unsanctioned marriage - took the lead in making some sort of a final statement summarizing the discussion and the plans for all attending.

"All of this sounds like tha work of Joachim," the old witch doctor surmised out loud while fiddling with a fetish hanging in her fingers. "Harald, it's hard ta tell. But Joachim always recruited people from afar, and he usually sent small teams of rookies to die and test tha waters. I expect him ta try and set up a long term leachin' operation, just stealin' from our mine but never damagin' it or threatenin' tha city proper."

"He'll damage the local economy, though," Vegnus pointed out. "Whatever he steals will find its way te markets not far from here, all below market value. Yer work here in the community will mostly go unrewarded if he isn't stopped."

"But that still leaves tha question of how he knows when and where ta strike," Taiji said cautiously. Many of the locals leaned in closer at the drop in the volume of her voice, as did Traska, the draenei from Quel'danil Lodge who Navarion rarely ever spoke to. "The only outsiders ta have entered our city in tha past two months is ya crew, and only our ranger here has gone out. There's no way for Joachim's men - or whoever they were hired by - ta know when and where they can hit tha mine unless more people than just tha gnoll from tha other day have intruded."

Raising his hand, Navarion sought Taiji's permission to speak. "Elder, some cities in other places that experience problems with burglary organize civilians into committees to alert proper guards about infiltration. They call them community watchers. Just regular people who volunteer to patrol at certain times, since the civilians always outnumber the guards by a lot."

Ven'jin leaned on his staff in spite of the fact that he had no problems walking and was sitting anyway, humming in agreement. Taiji only had to consider the suggestion for a moment before grunting her approval. "So we just get volunteers ta walk around at night and holler if they see anything?"

"Basically, yes, that's what it is," he replied, feeling glad that the locals in the room also appeared to like the suggestion. "It might not seem like much, but the added recruits will ease the burden of the regular guards and allow a wider area to be monitored. Plus, it involves your general populace in the protection of their own city, so they get to feel like they're taking an active role in their own futures."

The handful of notable civilians in attendance looked slightly confused. Although trolls lacked the tyrannical feudal system of humans as well as the heavily ritualized kinship systems of the Orcs and dwarves, they did rely on a sort of caste system predating the ancient Amani and Gurubashi empires that held them back somewhat. The concept of common citizenry taking an active role in protection of their own fate was likely alien to them. All the same, both the leaders and the followers murmured curiously and their subtle opening of body language showed that the idea was well received.

"Very well...we can try this idea out for now," Taiji announced after conferring with Ven'jin for a quiet moment. "I'm not sure if it's gonna work, but if ya all are sure, we can give it a try."

"It's a fine idea," Vegnus said while clapping Navarion on the arm as high up near his shoulder as possible for the short man. "We're all behind it." Vegnus' attempt at backing him up made Navarion realize that he had been a bit bold in suggesting something he hadn't discussed with his superior or peers on the job, but thankfully the idea seemed to take.

There was minimal chatter beyond that as the meeting unceremoniously adjourned, and the elders filed out without saying anything or even giving direct orders for the guards to collect volunteers. Navarion and Vegnus caught some of the axe throwers outside and asked them to do so, receiving half hearted promises in return. The nature of the guards was almost dismissive when anything was being requested of them, despite their positive reaction to the idea. Frustrated once more at their lack of initiative, Navarion set off with Vegnus and Jalinde to recruit some of the young people - those most likely to be awake at night. Jalinde broke off to recruit on her own and Vegnus eventually followed Nephentha and Hogar back to the tents, satisfied that the locals were at least trying something new.

Once he received commitments from about a dozen teenagers that were a little more enthusiastic than those of the guards, Navarion broke off on his own to run his nightly circular patrol of all his wards again. Given how sensitive his long ears (and those of the locals) were, any sort of alarm raised by civilians would be heard and rapidly responded to. Normally it would be a risk asking the townies to take on such a task out in the wilderness, but the locals were forest trolls after all. Not all of them knew exactly how to throw a tomahawk accurately or how to parry a warrior's thrust and cut off his arm at the same time, but they were all a little savage and tended to fight based on instinct, rather than training the way elves and humans did. Plus, they were all freaking huge.

Satisfied that the patrols would, at a minimum, involve the citizenry a little more actively in their own community, Navarion set off, starting from the south end of the wall where it met the sea. Left to his own thoughts, he found himself unafraid of them for once, finally comfortable in his life and his path of adventuring.

As he checked the first ward to make sure that the cursed snail shells hadn't been tampered with, he allowed his thoughts to flow in and out of the present tense freely. Gone were most of the misgivings about the breakup of his guild, the breakup of his longest relationship and the wanderlust that kept him from his family for so many years. Sure, three years weren't a long period of time for a half elf in general, but he had left when he was only twenty, and that was the second time. He'd technically spent a sixth of his life away from his family, and the first sixth was early childhood which nobody ever remembers well.

But they would be fine. He tried to ignore Nephentha's words about his dear mother from before. There was no woman on all of Azeroth as tough as Cecilia Hearthglen, the twelve thousand year old retired sentinel who had seen the world rent asunder twice and experienced more oddities and crises than most people outside of northern Kalimdor would ever believe. The rest of the family was tight knit enough that they were all more than enough for each other, and if anything, his absence would only make their hearts grow fonder of each other.

The voodoo designs on his ward reminded him of what his father and Sonja, the Darkspear neighbor who was also his father's boss, had taught him. They were passed down from a father who had fought in the Third War to save Azeroth at the age of seventeen. Navarion left home at age eighteen for the first time, and didn't even fight in a war - he just had a series of adventures for a year that helped him grow as a person and as a man. This, his second foray into the world, had been for three years but had given him life experience his siblings likely wouldn't achieve at a similar age.

He smiled as he stood up and walked away from the first of his wards. No regrets to be had at all, really.

While he made his way to the second ward at a potential gap in the city wall, his ears caught the familiar sound of females chatting and giggling, but in a way only a fully grown woman could. One second later and his eyes, accustomed to seeing minute details in the dark, spied the three local tribeswoman strolling and talking softly as one led the way holding a torch. Off behind the trees - a small patch of pines rather than palms despite being so close to the ocean - he could hear three raptors searching for gophers as they waited for their mistresses to return.

The pair of burgundy eyes caused him to quicken his pace so as to cross their path in time.

All three of them were dressed in the typical fashion of the women of Raventusk: fur skirts less than halfway down their thick thighs, single strap fur brassieres that provided surprisingly firm support for the ample endowments they all seemed to have, and war paint even for the civilians. Unlike many of the lower castes, however, these ones wore sandals on their feet and lacked the painful looking piercings that bothered him so much. In spite of his tusks and mane, he realized how much he must have stood out, wearing leather and chainmail covering most of his body. Trolls of all varieties considered armor a coward's tool for the most part - one of the many reasons why they simply weren't destined to take over the world, his father always said. But his different appearance was something he knew how to work to his advantage elsewhere. He'd use it there as well.

The intentional clinking of his mail caught their attention. True to their village roots despite Raventusk having grown into a fully fledged if impoverished city, the three women all craned their necks completely in his direction to see the cause of the noise, and they made no secret that they were talking about him as he approached feigning nonchalance.

"His eyes glow, it's cause he's a shadow hunter," one of the two friends, sporting a Mohawk much like Navarion's chortled in Zandali as if he wouldn't be able to hear her.

"Shadow hunter's got a red or a blue glow. This man's eyes are silver." The second friend literally pointed at him limp wristedly as she spoke, not caring that he saw. "There isn't any race on Azeroth that has silver eyes." He grinned at how savage yet sheltered they could be.

The whole time, the burgundy eyed beauty stood there in a defensive posture that was almost tartish in how exaggerated it was. They continued strolling forward in roughly the same direction he was walking between the woods and the wall, an area empty even of guards. As he began to lap them, he slowed down greatly, not hiding that he was looking her up and down. In any other context, it would have seemed creepy. As young as he was, Navarion had plenty of experience with women, and one thing he learned was showing respect for someone's modesty. Ogling was rude unless the two people were in a relationship, and in fact the restrained nature of the women in most other places was part of the excitement: it was a balancing act, a sort of game to keep oneself hot and then cold to keep them wondering the whole time, avoiding brusqueness but never showing too much affection, either. Just enough to keep them confused, off guard and a little bit bothered.

But these more isolated, blunt folk were completely different from all that, as he'd observed during the past month. The women almost expected to be stared at by men who were interested in them, and they stared and even whistled right back. It wasn't unrestrained promiscuity in the streets; if anything, the young people didn't seem to run through the series of breakups other mortal races did so quickly. Their lives were simple and drama free, like those of most villagers.

But when the Raventusk were interested in someone of the opposite sex, they certainly didn't hide it. And as he slowed down to get a better look at his latest crush, her two friends took the nervous young women by the arms and whispered things to her that made her seem even more nervous, topping it off by leaving her in the empty area with him.

"Wait! I didn't say that!" the bouncy haired forest troll protested to her friends.

They laughed without answering as they disappeared behind the pine trees, dragging what sounded like one of the raptors with them. Until they left, Navarion waited silently, admiring the not so subtle curves of the young woman's hips and waist. That he so obviously checked her out most assuredly felt normal to her, but that he refrained from speaking when others were in earshot was probably alien; the locals cared little for who heard them voicing their affections out loud. She smiled in a way that told of both excitement and anxiety, reaching up to adjust her curls before trying to speak.

"So...um...hi."

Propriety had been ingrained in him both by genetics and upbringing. Even though he cared little for what others thought of him, he had always considered gentlemanly behavior something he engaged in for himself, first and foremost - to know that his treatment of others in public coincided with social norms. Once in private, all bets were off, along with all articles of clothing. Especially beloved to him was taming a wild woman; someone uninhibited and aggressive who he put off by his refusal to respond directly in a way they wanted. Teasing shy women was too easy; teasing someone assertive took skill.

In this case, the young lady was more on the shy side, but he could adjust. Or so he thought.

When he merely lifted a hand to smooth back his Mohawk, she jumped and squealed audibly, making no attempt to conceal the wide grin on her face. Her tusks, smaller than his despite her being a pureblood, revealed themselves from their origins on her upper jaw. Her teeth and tusks were all straight and pearly white, unlike those of a majority of the locals. Turned halfway toward the woods, he could tell her acting skills weren't up to par; she didn't play up her attempt at looking scared quite enough, and her dare for him to start the chase was a bit too obvious. He responded in kind.

Upon his first step, the village woman at heart jogged into the woods, obviously at a slower speed than she was capable of had she truly been afraid. Without even knowing why, he ran, not trying to catch her so much as lap her. They bolted through the woods like two children, laughing as she pulled branches back to let them swing back dangerously in his direction. She might have been shy by the standards of the tribe, but she was still a tribal villager; her methods of teasing him were far rougher than what he was used to. On more than one occasion, he narrowly missed being whacked in the face by a bent tree branch as she led him in circles and figures eights through the underbrush. Even in light of his greater agility - his feet were narrower like an elf's, less suited for bearing heavy loads and more suited for sprinting - he had difficulty catching up to her due to lack of knowledge of the terrain. Squealing once more, she broke out from the other side of the woods and ran between a shield of bushes, low hanging branches and temperate ferns. By the time he emerged, she had already mounted one of the two raptors left behind. He grinned at the large reptile, realizing that she'd been playing the game all along.

One leap and he was atop the screeching dinosaur, kicking his heels into its sides to pursue her onto the sandy beach only yards from that edge of the woods. He didn't know her, didn't know her name, hadn't even spoken a word to her. But words weren't necessary at that moment, chasing her under the moonlight. His blood pumped in his veins so hard that he could hear it as he watched her green curls bounce up and down upon each gallop of her raptor. She wasn't as skilled a rider as he, but all the same it was clear that she slowed her mount from its maximum possible speed. Not to let her keep her guard up again, Navarion leaned forward and silently prodded the raptor he rode to catch up, eliciting another wide grin and excited scream from her when she realized he was riding neck and neck with her. It was only then that he noticed she'd picked a switch from one of the trees.

Whack sounded off the leafy branch as she whipped him, missing his head as he raised his elbow just in time. Laughing in spite of the sting, he leaned to the side and put some space between the two raptors as they bounded northward on the empty beach. Surprised at how strong she was, he felt off guard himself as he kept his eyes on her, wary of another whack. He'd seen some of the jungle troll women in the Barrens play the same game during courtship, but he didn't realize how hard they actually hit their potential suitors during such races. A second time, she tried to take a swing and he tried to grab it from her, both of them fumbling and frightening their raptors as they almost fell off and took the reptilian mounts down with them. Both of them were jumbled for a few seconds as the creatures regained their balance and continued neck and neck once more, kicking up mud as they ran.

Until then, she hadn't noticed that he subtly edged her raptor closer to the water, and her mount slowed even more as its feet sank into the damp shore. Its galloping was uneven and she frantically tried to whip him again, giggling as she found herself unable to aim properly. Upon her fifth try, she whacked him one more time on the upper arm, and he once again felt the sting of the unnecessarily thick branch even through his leather.

Navarion had never courted women in this way before. Most of the women he'd been with were either draenei or trolls, but the Darkspear were rapidly becoming urbanized and the chase and whack game where the suitor expected a kiss if he overtook the young lady was seen as anachronistic. But as she nearly whacked him in the head with the branch, the primitive side of his nature took over once more, and he did something that he normally wouldn't have thought of even when drunk.

Bracing himself against the large mount's back, he measured the distance toward his slower competitor and launched himself right into her. Had she been the delicate type, it might have put her at risk, but when he tackled her off the top of her raptor and sent them both skidding into the shallows of the beach, she only laughed heartily and tried to wrestle her way atop him. His father had trained him and his brothers in wrestling well, and he quickly pinned her before realizing what he was doing.

He often teased women, played mind games and even behaved in manipulative ways, especially when under the influence of intoxicants. But he had literally just tackled an unrelated female to the ground in public and held her under him; for a split second, he no longer felt as in control as he had before when he realized he had technically just committed assault. In any other jurisdiction, he could possibly be arrested or even worse, have to deal with the young woman's father.

But when she wrapped her legs around his waist, put him in a literally painful headlock and smashed her lips against his, his heart went from pounding in shock and fear to pounding in shock and nervous excitement. Confused as all hell, the raptors wandered away and left them to be soaked in the crashing waves.

Lucky for them, they had happened to arrived far north of the city proper but far south of the city walls. Their raptors were absent, but so were any prying eyes that could have spied them that morning. True, the tribespeople were by no means prudish, but he was an outsider and was supposed to have been monitoring for potential intruders. Being naked on the beach with the daughter of one of the tribal elders would have been a compromising situation indeed.

* * *

The drying rack he had built from branches held firm, and the morning sun had done much of the important work on his leathers. They would still need possible treatment at the tanner, but cost of living was so low that it didn't matter.

She knelt in the sand just at the edge of the waves, watching the sun reflect off of the waves of the clean waters. It was a world of difference from the ports of many industrialized areas; the turquoise ocean was so clear that even the details of the reefs could be discerned. A light breeze ruffled her now straight mane as she closed her eyes and hummed, wearing nothing but her panties and a serene smile. He moved up behind her, wrapping his arms around her waist and holding her to him.

The salt on their hides would normally have felt itchy, but on that morning it felt grand. He felt it on his chest and her back, and on the side of her cheek as she leaned in to him. All conscious thought and apprehension left him as they leaned in to one another and breathed, living directly in the moment.

He pulled away from her slightly, and spoke for the first time since the night before. She didn't open her eyes, but smiled in anticipation of what he might say.

"I'm Navarion," he whispered to her. His breath on her ear caused her to blush immediately, and he knew they would only have a few seconds for her to answer before they lost themselves once more.

Two burgundy eyes peered at him narrowly, almost hypnotic for reasons he didn't understand.

"I'm Izzy."


	9. Who's the Fool

The first trade ships had not yet arrived at the first pier that had been completed at Raventusk City. Several more were nearing completion as multiple teams of locals worked around the clock under the supervision of Steamwheedle Cartel teamsters, and once those were all done, a cargo ship from the Wetlands looking to barter lacquerware and silverware for opals was scheduled to dock.

Until then, however, the sole pier was by no means empty. Having a larger place to moor their ships, the local tribespeople had constructed even larger fishing vessels that had too much drag to land directly on the shore. Their cattle were primarily for milk, leaving fish as the primary source of protein in their diets. Given the sheer size of forest trolls, a population of ten thousand ate copious amounts of swordfish and grouper every single day, and the pier was busy around the clock as fishermen brought more and more catches to the impoverished and borderline malnourished locals. Although most of the credit had gone to their own laborers who built the ships, proper thanks had been expressed to the cartel for their supervision and provision of materials for the pier itself.

As Navarion walked along the main docks an hour before his patrol shift began, he was surprised at him many people stopped to shake his hand before he could even observe the work being done. They didn't gush the way draenei would nor did they try to force him to be a dinner guest the way humans or orcs would, but they were gracious and polite nonetheless.

People had even begun to take initiative when they saw all the improvements in their city. A few stalls had been set up where locals wove fishing nets, fashioned tackle and lures and even offered to scale and gut fish for a fee, saving the sailors time to devote to their main duties.

His brother Tiondel would probably try to write a book about the place, Navarion thought as he watched everyone work.

Just at the edge of the docks, a familiar bumbling voice sang a low tune while skillfully dragging something large, wet and struggling behind him.

"Hearthglen!" Wendigo beamed, thankfully sober as he held a terrified looking sea lion by the scruff of its neck. "It's been a while." He squatted on a crate as he spoke, roughly handling the sea lion in a way that made the half elf wince.

"Well, things are fine," Navarion answered in his greatly improved Zandali as he tried to ignore seeing meat he might even buy himself before it had been slaughtered and prepared. "Great, actually. I'm thrilled to see how well the construction is coming along."

His heart jumped into his throat when he saw Wendigo pull a skinning knife from his belt. "Oh, it's wonderful, isn't it? Thanks for all the help, by the way. Our guys here at the ocean have really increased the amount they haul in each day - look at this chap right here!" he said while slapping the sea lion's back. "Fit as a fiddle. Quite a few barbecues form this one, I reckon."

"Oh...yes, I tried some of the sea lion you caught a few weeks ago. It was...pretty good - oh, what the hell!"

Clamping one hand on the sea lion's snout to stop it from screaming, Wendigo sat on its back and began to skin it alive. It squirmed beneath him, but he held firm as he apparently tried to preserve its pelt.

He looked up at Navarion in confusion. "Oh, don't worry. The taste is preserved better if you don't kill them first."

"Wendigo, just slaughter it already!" Navarion protested, working hard to restrain himself from trying to save the already doomed future meal. His half night elf heart ached as the ignoble savage almost completed the job mercilessly, and he felt as if Elune would send him to hell for doing nothing. "It would take a second to do properly and save it from needless suffering!"

Wendigo only laughed in a non mocking way, honestly appearing to think it was a joke. "Animals don't have feelings, everybody knows that. And..,oh, hey!" He stopped his torture for a moment to wave at a basket weaver passing by. "Navarion, watch this thing for me," he said while callously pointing to the living being trapped beneath him. "I've been trying to chase this basket weaver down for two days, he screwed up my last order!"

Not even waiting for the half elf to respond, Wendigo handed him the knife and sped off after the basket weaver. The sea lion stayed where it was next to its own skin, hope gone from its big, sad eyes as it waited for an end far too slow in coming.

Navarion didn't need anything beyond that. Whispering a prayer in Darnassian, he looked the sea lion in the eye as he drew the knife over its jugular to perform a proper slaughter and give it a quick end. He couldn't fight an entire culture of ignorance, but at least he could give one living thing respite from Wendigo's cruelty.

"I'm sorry," he told the sea lion while casting a healing spell on the surface of its body.

He couldn't save it nor would he try considering the damage done, but his spell numbed the pain as it slipped away. He felt its soul pass on, his voodoo giving him a sense of life and death like a sort of medium. There was an inkling there that the soft words had helped the animal to move on at least somewhat peacefully, and Navarion stayed by the poor animal for however long it took Wendigo to come back.

"Well, shit, I guess it died," the ignoble savage said in disappointment, oblivious to the burning look Navarion shot his way. "Thanks anyway, we can't have the gulls picking at our meal."

Wendigo may have said something else, but Navarion wouldn't have heard it as he walked away quickly to wash his hands and clear his mind. As much as he enjoyed the quiet simplicity of life in the overgrown village, there were some backward aspects he wished they would progress out of more rapidly.

Focusing his anger on Wendigo personally was an effective coping mechanism, but deep down inside he knew that wasn't quite fair. Like all people, the Raventusk had their share of contradictions and double standards. They were truly grateful for the help they'd received despite the common people having initially refused to admit their city needed help. Their family structure tended to form remarkably strong bonds despite the fact that they paid little attention to their children and allowed them to leave home far earlier than elves or even humans or goblins would. They almost never cheated on their partners despite their relatively lax attitudes toward sex. And when they decided they like someone, they would defend that person to the death despite their total lack of any empathy, sympathy or even simple kindness toward animals.

Cruelty to animals was a society wide problem there, not just a problem for Wendigo - who, despite being an alcoholic brute, was also nice to Navarion personally.

A water pump had been set up a ways away from the docks, in the middle of s free pine trees and next to a cement basin full of wet paper waste and filth from washing off donkeys. The water table was high, however, and by constantly rinsing the large basin off by the bucketfull, bad smells were kept at bay. Leaning in the grass to pump the water while avoiding direct contact with the basin, Navarion was able to strain as he washed his hands and did his best to push the image out of his mind. He'd killed animals while adventuring before, for defense and food, but he was never cruel - not even to his sentient enemies. Elune taught that the best death was a quick one, and even if he was non-practicing, the precept was one of the few he tried to live his life by. Blood stains from the knife handle and the sea lion quickly washed away under the running water, removing the mark and helping him to repress the memory. Wondering if he'd be able to see Izzy that night - they had both been busy the night before - gave him something else to focus on.

By the time Vegnus had found him, the young man had more or less finished drying his hands on his handkerchief.

"Getting an early start on yer shift, I take it?" the cheery dwarf asked from the dirt road running past the water pump.

Navarion looked up, not startled but not having expected to bump in to the cartel's area manager of operations so far from the city hall, either. "Well, I don't like jumping straight out of bed and in to work. It's much better to take the time to wake up and warm up properly."

"Aye, that makes sense," Vegnus said, looking as though he weren't really interested in his own words. Glancing both ways quickly, he stepped a little closer to Navarion and shot an expression of mild urgency. "There's a meeting in just half an hour or so regarding the raid we're planning against the bandit hideout."

Raising a single short eyebrow, Navarion took a peek around to be sure nobody could listen to their conversation, but he also moved a little closer to the dwarf regardless. "I haven't heard anything about this supposed raid."

"That's part of the discretion involved. Now that we know these people have the ability to sneak a contingent of sixteen troops in at night, all the plans are going to be extra quiet."

"In case there are spies hanging around?"

"Exactly," Vegnus beamed as quietly as possible. "I don't know that many details myself, but apparently it will involve us and maybe two dozen of their own people."

Navarion was taken aback, unable to contain his reaction. "That's it? Seriously?" he scoffed while taking a seat on one of the many logs lying by the dirt roads as benches. "This place has a population of ten thousand and they're giving us a few dozen troops?"

"That's te be expected, laddie. Look at it mathematically. They have ten thousand and their population is overwhelmingly young. Maybe half their population is either too young or too pregnant te fight."

"So we have five thousand, and they're forest trolls. It's not like they really need training to preparation to know how to fight," the half troll reasoned in disbelief.

"Hold on there, I didn't finish yet. Ye got the guards that need te stay back here at the city, both the day shift and the night shift ones asleep-"

"Whoa, wait, day shift?" Navarion asked incredulously. Vegnus sat next to him and shook his fist furiously, indicating that he needed to speak a little more quietly. "Am I to understand that we're going to assault a heavily fortified stronghold in broad daylight?"

"The elders say that the bandits will expect us to try and launch a sneak attack at night, so they want us to attack at day te throw them off."

It was a bit of a shock, and the young man puffed his cheeks up before releasing the air as he forced his misgivings away. "Alright, I guess. They know the region better than we do." He ran a hand up over his Mohawk while he thought, but quickly spoke again before Vegnus could change the subject. "But that doesn't explain the lack of troops."

"Alright, let me finish, laddie. So from those five thousand, you have a good hundred or so guards and government workers at day and another hundred at night." Navarion was about to interrupt, but a raised fist from Vegnus - mixed with frustrated laughter from them both - silenced him. "The remainder are civvies that work normal jobs here in the city and possibly have kids and animals te care for. Many of them are part of the militia - like ye said, yer pa's people're born te fight and cause trouble - but they'll only fight te defend from invaders. Ye can't just have a quarter of the adult population or however many just up and leaving the city all at once. That's not how the division of labor works."

"I know how the division of labor works, Vegnus. Del used to talk everybody's ears off about it," the young man snickered, thinking about his youngest brother once more. For a split second, he froze after realizing his mistake, and perceptive as always Vegnus leaned forward when he noticed Navarion's apprehension at the possibility of discussing his family. Thankfully on task, the dwarf brushed it off temporarily.

"So that's how it is. We can get twenty five of these headhunters they have here, maybe a witch doctor te help Traska and ye with the heals, plus Nepha. I reckon she can take quite a few of them out on her own."

After a minute the last statement registered and Navarion was taken aback once more. "I know Nepha has been training hard under her mom, but take out bandits? She and Issa were always nerds," he remarked, letting his guard down once more.

"Ye've been gone for a long time, laddie," Vegnus said, nonchalant at first. "Nepha is the type of witch that lead the snake people deep in the ocean. She could take any human or elven Mage her age any day, and probably quite a few who are older and more experienced. And don't talk about yer sister like that, Issa is one of those priestesses yer ma's people follow, the combat healers." He paused and hardened his expression, and immediately Navarion's heart began pounding as he searched for anything to say to avoid talking about his relationship with his family.

"Very well, then. Hogar and Jalinde will probably be on point, so I'm guessing that Traska and I will support the group while Nepha-"

"I know battlefield tactics, son," Vegnus said in a calm voice that made Navarion nervous nonetheless. "I might be a civilian, but I've seen yer parents in action enough te know how it's done."

"You're right, I didn't mean to insinuate-"

"And they're a fine set of parents I wish I had grown up with. Not everybody gets a family that is both traveled and well off like yours."

"Well, look at the time," Navarion mumbled while searching for his miniature clock. "We better get going to that meeting."

"Sit back down," the diminutive civilian ordered in an uncharacteristically gruff tone. "Ye can blow the others off, but not me. I held ye in me hands when ye was a wee infant but three weeks old. I flew all the way out te Astranaar te see ye. Ye can't hide anything from me. Maybe Nepha, but not uncle Vegs."

"There isn't anything to hide." He tried his best to hold a poker face and drone tone, but neither worked.

"Look, yer a man now. A very young, impulsive man, but yer still a man. Ye ain't a teenager anymore. Ye have yer own private business and yer own life. But ye also know yer family's situation. Yer parents don't have much time-"

"Let's go," Navarion said while clapping Vegnus on the thigh and pretending he couldn't hear. He stood up to leave, but didn't actually walk away from the member of the Ratchet community that was more or less family to him.

The dwarf remained seated, forcing Navarion to stand and pretend to look at the trees around them on an isolated part of the road between the docks and a neighborhood. "Ye know what I'm saying is true. Nobody expects ye te live at home all yer life. We all know that yer a wanderer. But ye've been gone three years, and ye know that in ye ma's culture, a twenty year old isn't old enough te move out of his parents' house. When we finish this job, ye need te go home, son."

"I'll visit soon. You can tell them I promise that," Navarion replied in as neutral a tone as he could muster, counting the folds on a pine cone a few paces away from him.

"What do ye mean visit, huh? Ye have a home and there's one empty bed there. Yer going te live centuries from now, maybe even half a millennia. Yer ma's generation of Kaldorei are dying off of natural causes and yer pa is a troll, ye know they die young-"

"My home is in the Hinterlands," the young man answered stubbornly, not even considering what he was saying as he took a single step away but stopped, unable to show open disrespect.

Furrowing his thick brow, Vegnus looked confused as all hell as he considered the statement for a moment. "Ye think yer going te stay here when we're finished? Are ye even listening te yerself?"

"I've done a lot of thinking over the past month and some change. Things are really working out here, among these people. They're closer to my roots."

"Half of yer roots, and they're still distant. Forest trolls aren't jungle trolls, laddie, and if ye don't understand that then ye really don't know much about yer own background anyway. They're about as different as night elves and blood elves."

"Honestly, I like it here, Vegnus. If I'm happy, what reason is there to leave?"

The dwarf stood up that time, brushing off the pants of his light brown Steamwheedle uniform in some sort of a signal that he was done. His cheeks darkened slightly and his frustration showed, but he had never been one to dwell on the negative. "I said my piece, laddie, and so did ye, in more ways than ye might realize. Do as ye wish, but remember that ye have hundreds of years ahead of ye te be seflish, and yer parents only have a few decades te spend with ye."

"So if this city hall meeting is discreet, how many people can we expect to be there?" Navarion asked cordially as they began to walk, training his vision straight ahead.

He could feel Vegnus boring holes into his head with a fuming gaze, and they walked in silence until it passed. Once they began to pass more of the locals, traversing the narrow dirt roads in between the huts on the way to city hall, the dwarf loosened up and seemed to return to his usual non gruff self.

"They're proud of ye, even if they're mad at ye too. They know the good yer guild did, taking out that glass tower built by Twilight wizards and the thieves caverns. If ye would only go home, ye'd find that none of them think ye let them down."

City hall came into view just in time. Vegnus' last claim stung in particular, and further reinforced the defiant young man's belief that not a single member of their circle of family and friends had a clue of how they truly acted around him.

Soft footsteps padded next to his heavier ones as he dodged in and out of the city crowds, just trying to get to his destination. He didn't even look at his companion and vice versa, and Navarion merely found himself wishing the burden could be removed from his shoulders. If only his family could stop being so clingy, so needy, stop putting upon him so much, maybe he could learn to value them. But they certainly didn't value him. They took him for granted.

The voice sounded off next to him as he moved around another gaggle of goblins, and he tried to focus on the blaring of the horns for the last call of the passenger ship to Tanaris. Dirt roads transformed into brick as he found himself back there again, forever trapped as long as he didn't manage to forget the past.

Zengu, the middle brother, even tried tugging on his shirt sleeve to get his attention, but to no avail. Stop being a pest, he told his overweight sibling, trying to embarrass him into remaining quiet. Were it not for their godmother Irien catching them on the way out of the house, he would have ditched his annoying, inept, cripplingly shy little brother anyway. As they passed the red shingle roofs of the houses on the lower street curving below them, Navarion could just barely see his friends around the bend. Unlike the other children, he and his siblings were home schooled. His sisters attended tutoring at the local academy, but aside from that, their learning was at home; and he absolutely despised it. At least he could still be friends with normal people, he thought, as he saw the three other twelve year olds sit on a bench facing the other way.

Before he could call out to them, Zengu pulled on his shirt sleeve one last time.

"What! What is it! What do you want!" Navarion shouted at the nine year old.

When he turned, he could see what it was - always necessary considering the fact that Zengu rarely ever spoke due to his social anxiety. It was only a few minutes ago that he had temporarily lost his little brother in the crowds, ditching him near the auction house by taking a side street. Zengu caught up a few minutes later and tried to get his attention, but he refused to even look at the late developing child. The dry tears on Zengu's face, however, spoke of what had happened in the few minutes when Navarion had actually managed to escape him.

"What...what the hell happened?" he asked urgently, worrying that he would be blamed for making his brother upset.

Eyes downcast, Zengu held out his hand to show the remains of the tin wire puzzle Irien had given to him. It was a small cage made by unconnected, interlooping metal wires that enclosed a wooden ball; the point of the puzzle was to remove the ball without bending the wires.

Except the wires were bent, and the ball was missing.

After a moment, he figured out what had happened, remembering a group of local human children that would harass the pudgy boy whenever he was left unattended. Navarion's heart raced in panic at the possibility of being blamed and anger that his stupid brother had gotten himself into trouble again. "Zengu, why didn't you tell me when those kids were messing with you! You should have said something!"

For a second, Zengu's lip quivered as if he were about to cry again, but he quickly contained it and continued to stare at his shoes. "You told me to leave you alone," the shy boy mumbled. "You said you didn't want me to be around you."

At first, Navarion opened his mouth to tell Zengu what an idiot he was, but stopped himself short. The boy's statement was, technically, correct: Navarion had done his best to lose his overweight, socially challenged brother in a crowd of mostly adults around one of the busiest, most chaotic parts of Ratchet. From his action, the consequence of Zengu's inability to defend himself once again made itself apparent, and all Navarion could do was pinch the bridge of his nose, wonder how he would explain this to Irien and his parents and add another point to his list of reasons why he regretted the family he had been born in to.

So hard did Navarion pinch his nose that his vision blurred, and for a few minutes the Raventusk city hall almost did look like the Ratchet auction house. Much of the explanation of the closed door meeting was lost on him as he repressed yet another bad memory of the hundred and one ways he failed his family. Try as he might, convincing himself that they had actually failed him wasn't as easy as it had been when he and Rachel were knee deep in unanimated undead corpses, his mind preoccupied by what lied in front of him. Instead, he just chose to forcibly forget and pretend it didn't happen.

His vision came back into focus, and the fel fires on the few torches in the main hall helped him take a head count. Apparently there were only six elders present - including Taiji, who was talking, and Ven'jin - in addition to himself, Vegnus and their companions. Four local Raventusk axe throwers were there, apparently each one of them leading a group of five of their comrades. From what little Navarion managed to pick up, those other locals weren't to be informed of the raid until an hour before mobilizing, or some other short amount of time like that - he was experiencing difficulty focusing on Taiji's voice as he tried to think about anything other than his personal life. There were details of how the assault would take place, who would lead whom and other such details, though they were hard to make out.

When Navarion noticed that Izzy wasn't there as she had been for a few meetings, suddenly his hearing and vision became clear. His present beat out the melancholy of his past and the uncertainty of his future, and looking to see if his latest affair had attended the meeting and hidden just out of view ironically helped him to pay even more attention to what her mother the elder explained.

"So it's settled, then," Taiji announced after conferring briefly on the stage where the elders sat. "We move one week from today at eight o'clock in tha mornin' so as ta arrive at tha bandit hideout by high noon. They're gonna be more sluggish then, and less alert."

Back to his wits and senses, Navarion did a double take at the time frame and his hand shot in the air. Taiji gave him a nod, indicating that he could speak freely.

"Elder, are you sure that an entire week is needed to organize this?" he asked as deferentially as he could. "Our group is relatively small; in theory, couldn't we have everybody ready by tomorrow?"

Underneath the skull design of the war paint on her face, she grimaced, visibly upset by the question. "As I already explained, we ain't gonna tell tha troops about this march until tha day of. That means we gotta shift labor around and adjust patrol schedules such that we have enough of our fighters sittin' around on tha clock but without a specific assignment, not all in one place, and enough guards left ta manage tha city while we're gone." She tapped her mate on the wrist, signaling that she wanted him to jump in.

"I'll be accompanyin' tha convoy; tha rest of us are gonna stay behind," Ven'jin chimed in while motioning to his fellow elders. "This has gotta be a secret, even from tha guards themselves. People talk." He turned to Taiji as if to communicate silently. They looked into each other's eyes for a moment, but in a non lustful or romantic way, and when she stayed silent, he continued. "All of ya cartel people signed on ta defend tha construction projects. We ain't gonna obligate ya ta come along for an assault outside of tha city. But if ya choose ta come with, ya know we're gonna be grateful, especially ta ya organization as a whole."

"Steamwheedle is in this all the way," Vegnus said, and thumped his chest in tandem with Hogar despite the fact that the dwarf wouldn't be going along for the actual assault. Nephentha nodded congenially as well, low key as always.

Anchorite Traska raised her hand as Navarion had, eliciting snickers from two female axe throwers standing behind her who had been criticizing her robes in Zandali most of the time. "The Alliance and the Horde have ceased open warfare for a decade. It's past time for open cooperation to become the norm."

From what Navarion learned from the local children, the Raventusk were much less attached to the Horde as a faction than the Darkspear, and the differences between the factions were largely lost on them, but the elders thanked Traska anyway. Much more strongly remembered and felt, however, were the wars between the forest trolls and high elves. When Jalinde cleared her throat, any snickering or bickering stopped.

"I stand here as a member of the Alliance and an ethnic high elf. My people fought yours in the past, and I lost people close to me, as some of you here may have experienced." Her demeanor was stoic and stiff, but Navarion fought the urge to pat her on the back comfortingly, knowing just how true her words were. "It is my hope that my standing with you now can contribute to a movement of reconciliation between my people and yours, and to bury old conflicts that are best left in the past. And...to show that elves and trolls can get along in the eastern hemisphere, and not just the western."

When she shot an overt sideways glance at Navarion, the locals began to chuckle in a good natured way. Despite initial difficulties, Jalinde had managed to fit in to the city surprisingly well, and it was heartening to see former enemies rise above centuries of mutual racism.

Once the laughter subsided, Taiji rose, signifying the end of the meeting. "Let not a word of this be spoken; this's gotta be top secret. One week from taday, we march." She led the other elders out the back door while the axe throwers hurried out the front door, talking among themselves about who could eat the most potatoes or some such nonsense. Navarion paid them no mind, filing out behind everyone else last as he soared on cloud nine.

Out on the dirt road, he waited until nobody was looking back at him and literally jumped for joy. As much as he did enjoy life at Raventusk, the possibility of another combat situation excited him greatly. New friends and a lover were one thing, but doing what he did best was the ultimate means of staving off monotony and escaping bad memories. He could almost feel the scraping of his sickle blade against the bones of undead soldiers, the clash of his allies' invincible bodies against their enemies' shattering weapons as he cast his protective voodoo spells on them, or the ultimate form of instant gratification: loading his pistol and then unloading it into the cranium of a bad guy. Enraptured, he almost jumped one more time when he felt someone take him by the arm.

"What? Who?"

He turned to see Nephentha's face, scaly and reptilian though symmetrical and appealing in its own alien way, looking up at him. The others had already hurried back to the camp save Jalinde, who had likely begun her patrol, and most of the locals were already in their homes for the night.

"Walk with me," she asked in Nazja slowly enough for him to decipher the pronunciation as she led him along.

Too mild to be labeled panic, a sense of unease settled within him anyway. There was no way for Navarion to know if she had spoken to Vegnus or not, but even if she hadn't she was liable to remind him of the same things. That Nephentha lacked Vegnus' discretion - anything and everything he said would eventually be reported to his parents, he knew for sure - didn't make things any easier.

This time as they walked, she didn't torture him with the silent treatment, and spoke before he had the chance. "You seem rather eager for the coming conflict," she commented nonchalantly. Knowing Nephentha, that meant she was anything but nonchalant about the topic in question. "Please keep in mind that this isn't a game, and that you do have people waiting for you."

When he felt sure that she had finished, he tried his best to reassure her and brush the topic off at the same time. "I fought the Scourge for years, Nepha. Don't worry, I'll be fine. Especially if I have people like you to watch out for me." He patted her on the hand and tried to walk a little faster, but despite light figure, he had difficulty forcing her coils forward if she didn't feel like being moved. Damn serpentine anatomy, he thought.

Just as they arrived at the camp, she loosened her grip a little, having made the point that she wouldn't accept being brushed off or rushed. "This isn't about us. We're adventurers. This is what we do. This is about the livelihood of thousands of people here in this city. We go on quests like these to make the world a better and safer place, not to numb of hearts by wading through pools of blood." She released him and turned to face him fully, and when he met her eyes, the sense of closeness was crushing and unwanted. Despite the snakelike slits of her pupils, he may as well been standing in front of one of his sisters, and a sense of guilt crept in even before she said anything to him. He had grown up with the young sea witch, and her parents were close to his. She really was a sister, he thought, and that terrified him. "Running from who you are won't necessarily lead you to some sort of a new life. All of us," she said, putting no emphasize on the word 'us' despite the way it rang in his ears, "wish to have Navarion back, world travel experience and all. I hope you will oblige."

Perhaps she had felt the pang of emotion for a moment as well, as she turned away as abruptly as she had taken his arm in the first place. He watched her slither into the tent for female crew members without looking back, relieved that she had left but slightly shameful that a measure of the hurt he may have caused reared its head right when he had been feeling better.

Between the trees near the camp, two burgundy eyes reflected light from the torches lighting the dirt road. Before he could even get a grip on reality, the smell of earth and ozone filled his nostrils once more, and he had the distraction he needed. He repressed the conversation and pretended all was well, chasing Izzy as she teased him all the way to the shore. At least his new coping mechanism didn't involve alcohol abuse this time.


	10. Where Angels Fear to Tread

"No, you need to tighten the strap of his armlet a little more," Navarion instructed Taran, one of the local Raventusk children, as the boy assisted Hogar in donning his armor.

"He's doing fine," the perennially optimistic Orc chuckled as the young forest troll lad redid the leather armor strap a second time.

The little forest troll took to his task in earnest, displaying none of the laziness or lethargy many of the adults did when tasked with serving someone else. In truth, Hogar had donned his heavy plate enough times to know how to put it on himself, but they both saw it as a good opportunity for the energetic boy. Of course, few trolls ever wore armor, but perhaps this young generation would help the rest of them to catch up to the rest of the world.

Satisfied by a job well done, Hogar gave Taran a few copper coins. The members of the cartel, being representatives of a private conglomerate rather than a political faction, understood real world economics well and did their best to emphasize hard work to the local children rather than borrowing and lending at every opportunity they found.

"Thanks, mister!" Taran chirped in nearly unaccented Common, to the point where it almost sounded better than his Zandali as he ran off.

Old habits die hard, though, and the boy still forgot to close the flap of the tent behind him. The morning light filtered through the day before the planned assault on the bandit camp, and Navarion had ended up changing his sleeping schedule to take part in drills along with the locals. As physically powerful the forest trolls were, they completely lacked discipline, strategy and knowledge of advanced combat tactics. Against most foes, their low grunts and swift movements as they ran headfirst into their inevitably much smaller foes sent most potential enemies running away, and their swarm of tomahawks picked off the few that held firm. Were they to face enemies who understood that, however, they could easily be routed and outmaneuvered. And according to local legend, this Joachim fellow was not only familiar with the tactics of all the races of Lordaeron but also planned his battles well. To win this, Hogar explained to Vegnus and the others one night, they would need to at least train the Raventusk warriors to stand in formation and focus their efforts on one objective, if not necessarily work as a team.

All of that had to be achieved without letting them know why they were being trained on such short notice. It was only the third morning since they'd started, and the feedback was mixed. Some welcomed the diversion and saw it as a game, others wished to return to whatever it was illiterate villagers did in their free time.

Navarion and Hogar finished wearing their respective weapon sheaths and holsters and testing to make sure they wouldn't become detached during melee. When they finished, the young man waited for his father's old friend to lead the way out of the tent to start the day.

"Tell me what's new," the old Orc veteran asked while searching for his pipe. The morning sun lit up the stubble and scars on his chin, and it was a mystery why the man didn't smile more often considering how happy he was all the time.

Trying to think but not trying to think, Navarion once more fumbled for an answer to Hogar's riddles, rare and profound but always welcome. Not knowing whether the question was in reference to their group, the city or the project, he just spoke the first thing on his mind. "We're taking the fight to the thieves' doorstep."

Holding his pipe and searching for a match, Hogar didn't look up. He never did. "That is new," he confirmed, a little more occupied than usual as he failed to locate his matches.

Movement caught the half elf's eye near the break in the trees marking the entrance to the clearing. Dark brown disappeared into white contained in light brown, while forest green darted around in a circle. Turning fully, he saw Sharkasa, one of the local girls, laughing and playing a game of chase with Furball. The duskbat sat in a huge bucket of water, covered in soap suds as it tried to escape Sharkasa's scrubby brush. Beneath the surface of the bubbles it dove, popping up at random on different sides of the bucket as the child did her best to catch up and lather the flying mount's coat a little more.

In spite of Furball's occasional annoyances, Navarion couldn't help but laugh out loud at the scene. Neither child nor animal had a care in the world as they played, neither noticing nor caring that some of the people walking by stared. Navarion walked across the grassy clearing, taking a closer look at his pampered pet.

For a second, he considered making some sort of a joke, but thought twice. Little Sharkasa laughed so hard that she almost fell over, and Furball began jumping up and down in the sea of foamy bubbles regardless of whether she gave chase or not, thoroughly enjoying the unrestricted sudsiness, if that was even a word.

Deciding to let them be, Navarion looked back and saw that Hogar had begun to tell Nephentha and Traska a joke that involved bobbling his head as if it weren't attached to his neck, and the two of them were in stitches. The whole environment was infectious, and Navarion chuckled as well without even knowing why as he stepped out of the clearing and onto the main dirt road. For a split second, he thought he spied two burgundy eyes spying him once more before realizing they were two wild strawberries growing in a bush across from the clearing entrance. Raventusk reminded him of night elf towns to a startling degree in the sense that the many huts were interspersed by greenery, usually higher than their structures such that one got the feeling of communion with nature. He took his time walking over to the empty patch of grass that the axe throwers cordoned off by placing four boulders at each corner and calling it a drill yard. He was too far on the edge of the city to hear the bustle of the marketplace, but locals passed him while going about their business, so used to the presence of the half troll after a month and a half that many no longer greeted him profusely as was their habit with visitors they liked. They almost treated him like one of them, not staring or even taking note of the fact that he wore more clothing than they did or that his eyes bore a powerful silver glow.

Before he could reach the drill yard, however, he saw Vegnus far, far down the dirt road, waving to him urgently in the distance. Knowing that the dwarf was the last person to lose his cool, Navarion hurried over to see what the problem was.

As he approached, more people came into view in a little alcove between some storage huts. Taiji and Ven'jin were both there, leaning on staves that neither of them actually required for walking. A few of the Raventusk platoon leaders stood near Vegnus as well, everyone forming a half circle around a big person and a small person, though further details were difficult to make out in the group of bodies. They were speaking in low voices, too low for even Navarion's sensitive ears to hear until Jalinde and her scouting partner came into view in the center of the half circle.

"No, maybe not quite half," Jalinde panted to Taiji as though the ranger had just been running. There was little context to the conversation, but Navarion hung back next to Vegnus and tried to work it out on his own so as to avoid interrupting.

"So ya sayin' that they got even more than that up in tha hideout?" Taiji asked, an equal sense of urgency in her voice.

Taiji's scouting and hunting partner understood the Common being used in the conversation, but once again the young Raventusk woman had to answer in Zandali. "The elfie's count is correct. We counted a hundred before, but they must have attracted new recruits in the past week."

The big squadron leaders chattered in Zandali amongst themselves, but Ven'jin waved his hand at them as he switched the conversation to Common again. "If they're as close as ya say they are, then they're gonna be within strikin' distance in under two hours."

"That sounds absolutely correct," Jalinde replied, gripping her bow a little more tightly in reaction.

"Elder, this is an opportunity, not a crisis," Vegnus reasoned as all eyes fell to the short man. "If we strike now, we can take out nearly half of Joachim's fighters in one afternoon. Word will spread, yes, but the city council can order a lockdown until tonight."

"Ya're suggestin' that we march twice in one day?" Taiji asked skeptically.

"If the city is on lockdown, you'll have enough time for the tired and wounded te return, switch places with fresh fighters and restock the warband supply train. The troops can reach the hideout again within hours and - blammo!" Vegnus cried out while smacking his fist into his opposite hand. "They'll have only half their defenders left. They've made a big mistake by splittin' their forces in half."

Everyone fell silent for a moment as the two elders spoke to each other quietly. As if she had sensed something was wrong, Traska arrived leading Hogar and Nephentha behind her. There was surprisingly little tension as the decision seemed clear, and the sort of calm before a serious skirmish settled in the air around the group. After their quite mini conference, the older couple turned to the others.

"Then we gotta roll out right now. Ya, go tell ya troops to meet by the gate, and by tha Loa not a single one of them better talk ta anybody," Taiji instructed the four squadron leaders. They all grunted in affirmation and sped off, gleeful at the chance to get some revenge on the people responsible for delaying their city's economic growth. She turned to the cartel members and said out loud what Navarion had already pieced together. "A contingent of maybe fifty bandits is attackin' us preemptively. For sure, somebody talked, but we don't got time ta worry about that right now. I need ya all ta mount up and get goin' with tha others. Ya presence boosts their morale more than they wanna admit."

"Aye!" Vegnus agreed with gusto as he already started back toward their work camp. "Let's go, team Steamwheedle! This is it, just a day early!" His motivational skills weren't quite that of Yaromira, his counterpart, but the others kept the dwarf's unusually fast pace back to the camp.

They found that the cartel laborers had already gone to their work locations, leaving the two teenage goblin girls who functioned as camp caretakers sleeping again on a pair of hammocks in the shade. The mounts were either foraging or playing with Sharkasa and Taran, and Navarion flagged the two children down as his companions whistled for their mounts.

"Kids, I have an important mission for you," he bluffed, grabbing their attention right away.

"Yes mister Hearthglen!" they both chirped, always eager for work from the young man they looked up to.

He handed them some more copper coins and a napkin he had doodled on and folded into his pocket. It was silly, but they wouldn't know that - so trustworthy were they that he knew they wouldn't dare unfold it to see what it had written on it. "I need you two to take this message to Izzy. When you find her, stay with her until the evening and your parents come looking for you directly. Stay away from the city walls. Understand?"

"Yes sir!" they replied in unison again, saluting him as they took the money and the doodle of Izzy as a genie coming out of a bottle and ran.

The sound of Furball shaking off his dry coat caught Navarion's attention, and the moron's grin always plastered in the duskbat's face turned sideways at him. Hogar and Traska were already on their wolves and Nephentha soared overhead on her coatl. Jalinde was nowhere to be found.

"She went ahead without us," Traska explained as Navarion mounted Furball. "She'll meet the rest of the warband at a rendezvous point on the way ahead. Her hunting partner is leading the rest of us, they're probably read to march at the gates."

"Let's not waste time, then!" he replied while clicking his heels into Furball's sides.

The duskbat launched itself into the air, flying straight as it ascended and gained sufficient altitude. Navarion flew neck and neck with Nephentha, the two of them quickly overtaking the rest of the cartel companions and approaching the crude but sufficient formation of a good twenty five Raventusk axe throwers and headhunters. All of them rode on raptors, likely to save time. The trolls had great stamina, but their wide feet were made for bearing heavy loads, not sprinting; they were rather slow on the move, and the reptilian mounts greatly reduced the estimated time of arrival.

* * *

There were no words. The shadow hunter and the sea witch left their mounts to glide on the thermals overhead while the warband marched below. They could see the scout from earlier leading out in front as the path led them off the main road and into the forest proper. The terrain was rough but the raptors made great time, feeding off of the anger and excitement as the tribespeople sought to strike a killing blow against the bandits.

Minutes ticked by and the first hour passed as if it were nothing. The scout below never halted or slowed down, and she seemed to understand where she was leading everybody. Before he knew it, Navarion had spotted Jalinde hiding in a tree, and he signaled her location to the rest of the group below. They stopped beneath the redwood's branches, and he and Nephentha helped the ranger down and landed.

Once on the ground, the squad leaders dismounted to meet her, and she pushed her green hood back to listen for potential spies.

"They stopped to rest just ahead," she said in a low voice as the rest of the tribespeople dismounted as well. "They traveled farther than I had expected, which is probably why they need to rest. Their camp is set up and they're either on edge or sleeping, but they have flasks liquid fire in their tents. Getting past their initial barrage will be tough."

"Leave that to me," Nephentha offered as she stepped into the circle of commanders. "I can rip their camp apart with a small, localized storm; they'll panic, and the stragglers can be picked off more easily."

Jalinde looked to the Raventusk squad leaders briefly, focusing on the oldest one, a broad chested man who had a wide scar across his torso covered in war paint. It took him a moment to realize that he was the top ranking official on the mission, and he quickly agreed, not having any ideas of his own.

"How close do ya need ta get?" the man asked the sea witch.

"Close enough to see them, but I need to remain unseen - casting the spell takes more than a minute," Nephentha explained while readying her staff. "The storm will only be under my control so long as I can channel the spell uninterrupted."

"Can the rest of you hang back until the storm is finished dividing their ranks?" Jalinde asked the leader of the tribespeople.

The large man was caught off guard once more, looking rather sheepish for all his stature and battle scarring. "Very well...ya just give tha word ta pick off whoever tries ta escape. Until then, we're gonna hang back."

Two other squadron leaders returned to the now dismounted forest trolls to explain the plan to them while Jalinde spoke to the others.

"Traska, Hogar, try to stay in between us and them. We may need help keeping the locals at bay as well as getting their attention when it's time to strike."

"We're on it," the draenei answered as she and the Orc followed for a ways before kneeling behind a bush in the forest.

The tribespeople miraculously did as they were told, crouching low as they wielded their tomahawks and remained further back. Most of them actually tried to hide within the scenery and a few even led the raptors further away to watch the excitable creatures out of view of the area of battle, thus ensuring a stealthy assault.

Following Jalinde's lead, Navarion crawled on his belly next to her and Nephentha slithered. The trio reached a ledge overlooking the camp between the trees in a small gully below. Eyes trained ahead, Jalinde looked so serious, so focused that if Navarion tried hard enough, he could almost see his mother. His parents had retired from adventuring before he had even been born, but they still took him and his siblings into the Barrens occasionally, letting them get actual practice stalking and tracking the few quilboar and centaur clans who had refused to sign peace treaties with the major factions. In a way...

He shook his head. This was not a time to reminisce, not about the good times, not about the bad times. Jalinde was an ally and perhaps even a mentor and nothing more. Thankfully, she had remained so focused that she didn't notice the look on his face during his brief daydream, and he threw his less trained vision onto the movement he could spy in between the trees below.

"Quite a few of them appear to be napping," the high elf remarked in Thalassian without looking away from the camp. Her voice was low and it took Navarion a moment to adjust to the language - mutually intelligible with Darnassian and Nazja, but still different. "They're a good distance away from the city, so this is as good a location as any other. But they must have known we would see them...this doesn't make sense."

"Perhaps they're a diversion? To distract us from something else?" the half elf asked.

"That doesn't make sense. A diversion group is at risk of being wiped out, and this has to be close to half their people. They have provisions, arms, mounts, and there are dozens of people."

"Forty seven," Navarion said without even thinking, feeling the number of souls out via his voodoo.

Jalinde looked at him incredulously. She'd learned that he wasn't a ranger and had beginner level tracking skills, yet the number was so exact. Nephentha, having grown up with him, chimed in. "Voodoo is a combination of life and death magic. He can sense the number of souls, as well as any undead, soulless bodies."

"I don't suppose you could tell us how many are fighters and how many are just water carriers?" Jalinde asked with a bit of a laugh, already knowing the answer.

"I can just tell you that there are forty seven people but twenty two mounts, so many of them had to walk on foot. No undead, thankfully."

"All the same, we need you to take out as many as you can, Nepha," the high elf said while craning her neck sideways to address the naga. "For sure, some of them will escape, and of those that escape, Navarion and I can catch a few alive before the Raventusk scalp them."

"I'll need a distraction, however; my spell will create noise and light." Nephentha tapped the enchanted pearl at the top of her staff on the soil, and it hummed audibly solely from the contact. "Channeling the spell takes time and I'll be a sitting duck, plus we don't want them to know what's coming."

"Leave it to me," Jalinde whispered as she moved to the edge and began to lower herself down into the hedges below.

"I'll go with you-"

"No," she said firmly, slicing the air with her hand to emphasize her point. "Nepha needs someone here to back her up, and two of us might alert the bandits rather than merely creating a distraction. I'll go, create a minor diversion, and make a duck call when it's time to unleash the storm."

The three of them grinned at the last line. It was obvious that Jalinde hasn't even intended it to be a joke, but their spirits were uplifted nonetheless. Navarion watched her as she pulled her green hood over her blonde locks - an unfortunate hair color for a stealthy tracker, and he wondered why she didn't just dye it green - and then disappeared into the underbrush. Nephentha stood back up and hid herself among the temperate ferns, the green of her scales and the opalescent translucence of her head crest blending in to the greenery like camouflage. Navarion remained prone on his stomach; the light brown of his leather, silver of his chainmail, indigo of his Mohawk and violet-blue of his head and face were an unfortunate combination that rendered him rather useless when it came to sneak attacks.

After the calm that had enveloped the group before, a sort of tension finally settled in as his short companion remained hidden and the waiting period began. The raptors of the Raventusk were unheard off in the distance, and even the tribespeople themselves followed orders and stayed out. Aside from the chirps of birds and the occasional loud laugh from the bandits guarding the makeshift tent camp below, there was silence in the still forest air. The temperature was cool yet a bead of sweat dripped down the young man's forehead anyway in anticipation of what would come next.

More tense minutes ticked by without disturbance, and that disturbed him greatly. "Where is she?" he whispered to Nephentha.

Snakelike eyes met his before scanning the camp in the gully below, equally concerned. "Just give her time, she knows what she's doing-"

"Wait!"

They both fell silent as he nearly jumped, the hairs of his mane standing upright all the way down the back of his neck. Voices filled his ears the way his father had described to him when spirits spoke of what took place in the world of the living, and he honed the power on the source of the disturbance. He didn't know whether to call it a sixth sense or a more direct form of intervention like magic; according to his father, one wasn't meant to fully understand. But as he asked what he assumed to be Loa local to the area what was going on, he found a forty eighth soul in the gully below, hiding in a bush as five others boxed it in.

"They have her!" Navarion burst out a little too loudly, and he rose to his knees. "They located Jalinde, they're right on top of her position!"

Nephentha exited her hiding spot, remaining calm but obviously concerned. "If she's surrounded, then she won't be able to make the signal."

Rising just as she joined his side on the ledge, Navarion felt his mind race in a way unbefitting an adventurer. He was supposed to keep his cool better than this but for various reasons - or perhaps, more like one specific reason from his past - the thought of losing women he cared for stung him more than simply losing a mere comrade of any gender. He held his breath for a moment to calm his voice, but his mind still raced.

"Nepha, start channeling the spell!"

She hesitated, unsure of what to do and also a bit put off by his reaction. She wrung her wrist of her bottom pair of hands and fiddled with her staff with her top pair of hands. "Jalinde will be caught in the storm if I start now."

"She'll be caught by the bandits if we wait any longer!" He tried to swallow nothing as if it would calm his nerves, but in the end he had to settle for sheer power of will. "Nepha, there is no other way."

Eyeing him for another second, the young sea witch nodded and stepped back. All four of her arms were raised, one of them holding her staff, and she closed her eyes and held still. She looked almost statuesque, like some of the old naga relics he had once recovered with his guild when busting an antiques theft ring, and it had an inadvertent calming effect on him. Slowly, her arms began waving back and forth, barely noticeable at first. As every second passed, she swayed a bit more in the still air, and the glow in her staff's pearl remained faint.

The spirits spoke to him again, and Navarion could tell that the five skirmishers were creeping toward Jalinde's position once more. Just as quickly as the image came to him, it disappeared; Nephentha's arcane magic interfered with his voodoo, and the sympathetic vibrations he felt from the souls of the living melded in to the nature around them as his magic was blocked. He tried not to think about it, watching Nephentha instead as her pearl glowed even brighter and a sort of electric energy crackled between her open palms. Before he had even noticed, the wind had begun whipping through the trees despite the clear blue sky - clear except for a localized dark cloud forming just above the gully.


	11. Sacrifice

**A/N: sorry for the cliffhanger in the previous chapter. The progression didn't seem to work any other way, though.**

Shouting rang out from the camp as thunder clapped, very clearly coming from the cloud itself. From the ledge, Navarion had a clear view for at least a mile in all directions just beyond the trees. There was not a single other cloud in the sky and the sun shone brightly, but the speed at which the storm cloud formed as alarming. Logically speaking, Navarion knew that it was under Nephentha's control, but the freak weather phenomenon was still shocking either way.

Lightning. The first bolt. Loud, bright, frightening and violent.

Under normal circumstances, Navarion's kong ears would have been sensitive enough to make out just what exactly the bandits in the wooded gully below were yelling, but the whipping of the wind, the nonstop thunder and the bolts of lightning that were rapidly increasing in frequency drowned out all else. For the first time, he could hear the Raventusk raptors screeching back in the distance, and he could just barely make out some of the axe throwers edging up toward the ledge overlooking the gully. Nephentha stood in a sort of trance, totally unaware of what was going on around her as she slowly built up the spell. The fires on the canvas tents and wooden wagons to which the horses were still attached sparked up from more bolts just as the dark wind began to visibly form a cyclical cone.

Instinctively, Navarion moved closer to Nephentha. Not only would she need to be protected in her state, but the spell was also unlikely to turn on her. Brave from years of constant warfare far from his home, Navarion still had the common sense to be worried by a localized tornado whipping through the gully. Back and forth, it never left the confines of the natural earthen walls of the formation, and what had been the perfect hiding spot for a bandit camp now became a tomb as the fires spread, boulders tumbled and a few trees were even uprooted. Forked lightning remained within the confines of the gully but didn't always make direct contact with the bandits, a sign that Nephentha was still learning to control her magic in real world situations. By the time the first few escapees had made their way out of the gully, they were in such a panic that they didn't even realize they were running right into Raventusk ambushers. The forest trolls took savage glee in aiming for the limbs of their much shorter interlocutors, watching them scramble and die slow, unnecessarily cruel deaths as they tried to escape on what few hands and feet they had left.

"Nepha, the camp is destroyed," Navarion whispered to her. "We need the chance to catch some of these goons, the Raventusk are just cutting them to pieces."

Quickly but without visible disturbance, Nephentha came out of her trance. The tornado she'd created in the gully expanded, slowed down and dissipated in a matter of seconds and the lightning stopped immediately. The storm clouds overhead lingered, but those were harmless, and Nephentha stood for a moment with a look on her face as if she had just had her first taste of hard liquor. It was almost cute considering she had always been a bit of a nerd when they were growing up, but there was no time for thinking about that now. He turned and took a few steps back to see Hogar waiting at the ready and Traska standing just behind the heavily armored Orc for protection.

"It's time!" Navarion shouted, not realizing how quickly the tribespeople would began charging into the gully at his announcement. A different type of panic wrote itself across both his and Traska's faces as a dozen headhunters bounded down, grunting as their blood red Mohawks looked like a sea of red, crescent shaped hooks aimed at the enemy before them. "Hurry, we need some of these guys alive!"

"We're on it!" Hogar said in the closest voice to a yell that the super calm man could muster. He ran past, his heavy armor slowing him as much as Traska's hooves slowed her, and Navarion began to worry as to whether or not they'd even find any bandits alive in time.

Fully out of her trance, Nephentha slithered up to Navarion's side to observe the carnage. Arrows flew and even two rifle shots rang out, but the forest trolls charged ahead all the same, their sturdy but unarmored frames absorbing arrow and bullet alike as if they were mosquito bites. The bandits were composed of humans, elves, orcs and a number of obviously mixed race people, still a tiny fraction of Azeroth's population but more common than when Navarion was first born himself. The tribespeople towered over them, ignoring any wounds they incurred and cutting their enemies open as if it were all a game, moving from one to the other and making little effort to defend against incoming blows. They were huge, terrifying, natural born killers who fought on instinct and needed little training, but their tendency to move about the battlefield so casually and ignore the angry commands from their four leaders showed once again why trolls would never take over the world.

Very soon, the clash of crude flint tomahawks against metal weapons and armor died down, and were instead replaced by the screams of the few surviving bandits as the Raventusk picked off survivors. Much to the chagrin of Navarion's half night elf heart, a small group of the tribespeople played target practice using the bandits' horses as living targets, slaughtering eleven of them before one of the squadron leaders told them unceremoniously to knock it off. He found himself rushing to the scene as Nephentha followed, passing over the murdered mixed breeds as he tried to find visually the spot where he had last felt Jalinde spiritually. He passed Hogar, who had commandeered some of the more disciplined axe throwers into helping him hog tie the only six bandits who had survived and not died of blood loss. The Orc looked at him briefly but quickly looked away, not saying anything. Ignoring him entirely, Navarion still tried to find the exact spot, not paying any mind to Nephentha's somewhat annoying attempt to grab him and tell him something.

Away from the settled area of the gully - or at least, the part that had been settled before the storm hit - he found scattered trees where the laughs and post combat jokes of the tribespeople were no longer filling his ears. His own pulse pounded in them instead as he tried to find the exact spot, ignoring the blood in the grass and the dead bandit skirmishers lying about. He stopped when he saw someone blue and someone green in view just next to a bush that looked like a perfect hiding spot, kneeling over something and making noises he found strange. At some point Nephentha had caught up with him, and she may or may not have even been talking to him, but he took no notice.

Traska was the first of the two people to stand up, her blue, tear stained cheeks reflecting yellow light from her eyes. She shook her head repeatedly but said nothing, clasping her hands together as she took a few steps toward them. Navarion found himself moving over toward her at the same time as Nephentha, and the draenei priestess found no words as she leaned in to the two of them. Nephentha hugged her and said something to quiet her, and Navarion realized that the noise he hadn't heard so well before had been her crying.

Leaving the two of them, he walked over to whom he recognized as the young Raventusk scout who had led them there. The young lady squatted over a few bodies in the bushes, and as he looked around, he realized there were five corpses full of arrows and a sixth just in front of the forest troll woman. Her body was tense as she held her head down with a hand, clutching the back of her six ponytails as her back moved up and down without rhythm.

Navarion didn't need voodoo to tell him what his eyes could plainly see. His entire body went numb as he knelt next to the young lady, his extremities tingling as if he had slept in an awkward position. He hadn't even learned her name but in response to her obvious grief, he held her hand for a second and she held back, a sort of universal sympathy that spoke to all people. He struggled to understand what had happened and how, all the while his mind trying to convince him of a different reality than what his eyes could plainly see. Someone helped the scout stand up and pulled her away, leaving Navarion to gaze upon the mostly unharmed body before him.

He reached out and held the small pink fingers in his hand, searching for a pulse. They were already cold but not yet stiff, the color still apparent in them. Her green cloak and cowl were up damaged aside from the back, matching the color of the Lordaeron forests her people called home. The fingers of her other hand still curled around her recurve bow, a reminder that it had been like an extension of her own body in life. A soft, narrow face poked out from underneath her hood, her lips set in what didn't quite appear to be a smile but what looked serene enough. There were no cuts or scars to be seen, but when he gently touched her eyelids with his index finger and thumb and moved them open, he was met by two dull, white eyes bearing brown pupils and no glow at all.

One would not think anything wrong with Jalinde were it not for the knife in her back.

Cupping both hands over the blood stained cut in her green tabard, Navarion channeled his healing spell the best he could, trying to mend as much of the damage beneath the skin as he could before actually removing the blade from the cut. Even Traska's trembling hand on his shoulder failed to break his concentration at first, only succeeding when she put her arm around his shoulder.

"Resurrection spells can do...wondrous things," she whispered to him shakily as he fought to drown out her voice via the power of his healing. "In tandem with healing, they can bring someone back from the most grievous of wounds. Severed limbs...shattered bones...even damage to internal organs. But...even after so many centuries of research...there are to things we cannot bring a person back from. Damage to the brain stem...and damage to the spinal cord."

He pretended to have ignored her words at first, even as they cut deep into his psyche. His voodoo told him that the body lying before him was hollow and empty, the soul long gone due to the extent of the damage, and her body failed to respond to the heal spell. Even a dead body could be mended and healed provided the death had been recent, and post mortem healing was often necessary for a resurrection spell to actually work, unless the cause of death had been magical or from asphyxiation. But he knew this was not Jalinde's case. He had once tried to heal a retired Argent Crusader who had died of old age, only to find that a totally natural death had no possibly of reversal. And Traska's words regarding two types of damage range true, echoing in Navarion's ears as not a single cell of Jalinde's torn back adhered to his spell's attempt to seal the wound. As if responding to his internal admission, Navarion's voodoo fizzled out despite his mana reserves remaining almost full, and the spell dissipated from between his hands, forcing him to accept the reality before him.

Traska took him by the hand and helped him stand up, the two of them relieving each other of a measure of grief despite having barely spoken during the past month and a half. Jalinde's scouting partner clung to the both of them as they walked, heads bowed, breathing heavy but voices silenced. A small group had formed near the small clearing around the bush, and Hogar was already there, an expression on his face that was not quite sad but certainly disappointed on his face as Nephentha whispered the news to him. The scarred, broad chested leader of the Raventusk fighters had been watching the scene, and moved forward to take up Jalinde's comparatively tiny body in his arms like a sick child.

The witch doctor who had accompanied the warband hobbled over on his staff - unlike the elders who had sent them on the mission, this old man actually appeared to require the assistance. Mumbling a prayer in Zandali, he rubbed a circle on Jalinde's forehead before stepping back, giving the warband leader the space he needed to stand on a rock for the other forest trolls to see. Navarion felt confused by the odd sight at first, a massive forest troll warrior holding a nimble high elf ranger in his arms as gently as the man probably held his own children. All the other fighters of the tribe, men and women, wielding spears and axes, war paint and loincloths donned, gathered around quietly as they listened to their leader address them in their language.

"This woman came to us from the elves to the north. The people whose ancestors stole the land of our ancestors. We fought them centuries ago and we fought them decades ago. Many of us here lost relatives to them, as the people of her lodge lost people to us." The man was much more eloquent when speaking Zandali than when he spoke Common, and his tone was respectful in spite of his description of events considered acrimonious by many of his people, Horde and non Horde. "But this woman did not steal our land. She was born into a circumstance just as we were. She was born into it, and she dealt with it."

The tribespeople either knelt or squatted down as they listened. Not a word was said despite their usually tendency to chatter even while their leaders were talking, such was the solemnity they granted an outsider who had failed to win many personal friends during her month and a half at their city. Jalinde's scouting partner had stopped weeping and fallen as silent as the others in a sort of sign that, since the others reacted the same way, there was agreement to what their leader said

"Under no compulsion, she came along to help our people. She could have stayed at her lodge. She joined our fight for development and freedom from banditry instead, and devoted her waking moments to safeguarding our future. She put herself in harm's way to help us take this camp by surprise and minimize our own casualties, becoming one herself in the process - falling to the knife of another of her race. She is not a race, but an individual, like all of us. Her name was Jalinde Summerdrake, and she was our friend." The man appeared a little sad toward the end, and the sound of feeling in his raspy, deep voice was touching. "Let us preserve her body for transport to her home; she deserves the care we would show to one of our own."

On cue, the other people of the tribe understood exactly when the speech was finished, stood up and parted for the leader and the witch doctor to take her body to one of the few bandit wagons not burned, commandeering it for transport. Navarion barely had time to finish repressing his emotions when Hogar cleared his throat.

"There's someone we need to talk to," the old Orc said. "One of the survivors is a dwarf, the only one. He's wearing an eyepatch; I think it might be Harald."

Glad for the distraction from his internal pain, Navarion patted Traska on the shoulder and she nodded as he left and joined Hogar. Everyone else began scavenging through what they could recover from the provisions and gear of the fallen tents and dead thieves, remaining uncharacteristically quiet as they did so. The hog tied survivors were settled into a trench that smelled like they had used it as a urinal prior to the battle, unsuccessfully trying to dodge the spurts of chewing tobacco the male tribesmen spat at them, much to the entertained delight of the females. Normally Navarion would have said something, though considering his sadness quickly turning into anger, his beliefs about the rights of prisoners of war flew out the window.

"That's him," Hogar said while pointing to one of the most awful people Navarion had ever set eyes on: a beardless dwarf.

Vegnus had a short beard, but it suited his features; he was thinner and almost softer than most dwarves. Among their own people Vegnus might even be ridiculed as soft, but he worked with his appearance, choosing the clothing and hairstyle of a very short human instead. This guy, however, was downright unpleasant to look at. His face was completely shaven, and his hair had been spiked up as if to match the eyebrow piercing. It was beyond ridiculous, and didn't match the man's facial structure at all.

The shaven dwarf could already tell Navarion was eyeballing him, and his refusal to acknowledge that caused all of the half elf, half troll's boiling rage over Jalinde's death to focus on apt he new target. Navarion grabbed him roughly by the binds around his ankles and wrists and pulled him up out of the trench, dropping him in the bloody grass to the delight of the Raventusk fighters standing around. Hogar let out a grunt of disapproval, but didn't intervene.

Kneeling low enough to look the squirming lout in the eye, Navarion pumped his fist and let his sickle blade flip out, just underneath the one eyed man's chin. "Are you Harald?"

Defiance filled the man's single eye as he appeared Legitimately unafraid, stupidly thinking he may have held some sort of a trump card. "Fuck off," he spat, completely unprepared for what came next.

In one fluid movement, Navarion cut the man's right hand off, an especially disrespectful form of mutilation in a world where running water or toilet paper were not always available. The beardless dwarf screamed as blood spurted from his wrist, and the forest trolls around grunted in approval.

"This is wrong," Hogar whispered to Navarion lowly enough that nobody else would hear their open dispute. "There are other ways to get information out of him."

The deed already done, Navarion nodded reluctantly, not willing to openly disrespect one of his father's former prison buddies. He grabbed the one eyed dwarf roughly by the chin, satisfied that his point had become clear. "You have three more limbs-"

"I'm Harald!" the man finally confessed, understanding how serious the maddened shadow hunter had become.

"And Joachim?"

"We've both been alive all these years! We went elsewhere te lie low and thought we could make a strong comeback here with so much time passed!" Harald's squirming slowed down as Navarion healed his stump. If anything, he became more afraid upon the realization that the young man could continue torturing him and keep him alive. "We were preparing fer a preemptive strike!"

"Against a city full of forest trolls? Are you nuts?" Navarion asked suspiciously, knowing there must be more to the story.

"No, not te fight. Te kidnap. We know the locals value their children more than their mine. It's a tactic that werks everywhere." Desperation filled Harald's voice as he struggled to sit up on the elbow of his handless arm. "I can help you out of this, but you have te trust me!"

"You don't have a leg to stand on, scum. Not for long, at least. Your kidnapping party has been destroyed."

Sincerely confused, Harald looked at Navarion like he was the biggest idiot in the world, suddenly unafraid once more. "Are ye...seriously? Ye think we'd try te take Raventusk City using a band of fifty people? We ain't that stupid."

Despite Hogar's second grunt of disapproval, Navarion placed his sickle against Harald's opposite foot. He wouldn't do it, of course, but only wanted to use the threat. "You have five seconds to start-"

"We only came here te accept the hostages and escort the, back te our camp!" Harald burst out, believing that he was about to lose another appendage. "We came as protection, our inside man is supposed te do the dirty work!"

"Tell me who! Who is this inside man, or you're losing all your limbs!"

"I don't know his name, he's just some guy who agreed te a cut of the money we could blackmail the city for if he helped us kidnap some of the youngguns!"

"Bullshit, I'm cutting off your nose."

"I'm yer prisoner, just take me back and I'll show ye!"

"Navarion," Hogar whispered, still making sure that nobody could hear him as he bent down near the young man's ear. "We're losing time if what Harald says is true, and we're gaining nothing if he's lying. We need to head back as soon as we can."

Logic prevailed, and after watching the one eyed dwarf squirm for a bit, Navarion left him to gasp next to his own severed hand. He tried to ignore Hogar's judgmental stare as he walked back to Furball, content to stew on his own until the tribal leader of the warband gave the command to move out with their prisoners and war booty. Ever understanding her longtime friend, Nephentha followed him but didn't speak to him directly, and stood between him and the rest of the group so that the others would leave him alone as well. The eventual command to roll out couldn't have come sooner. The tribespeople considered the skirmish a victory for them, and he should have as well, but instead he ended up cursing silently the whole time as he replayed the events in his head over and over again, trying to imagine how they could have turned out differently.

It was only the early afternoon by the time Raventusk City came into view once again. The caravan below had moved slower than its initial march due to the presence of wagons pulling prisoners and salvaged weapons and supplies, and the tribespeople marched on proud that they hadn't allowed a single runner to escape and alert the rest of the bandits. As far as everyone was concerned, Harald was a rat just trying to lie his way out of a well deserved thrashing, and they felt they had nothing to fear as they marched back.

Navarion's sadness that had turned into anger had finally settled in to a slow burn inside of him when the city first came into view two hours after the fight. Had anyone tried to talk things over in a reasonable fashion, his stubbornness would have forced him to react unreasonably, lashing out and refusing to accept the truth. He was lucky to have Nephentha there, he thought, because she knew him well enough to prevent anyone else from interrupting his brooding session as he coped with Jalinde's valiant death in his own way.

The high city walls were abuzz with activity from the axe throwers, and from his vantage point flying above, he could already see a small crowd of warriors and a few civilians gathered near the main gate. The closer they flew, the more his heart rate accelerated, fearing that Harald hadn't been so dishonest after all. There was nothing visually that would suggest anything out of the ordinary (other than construction materials disappearing) had occurred, but his intuition was generally correct.

He dove down and Nephentha did as well, following him to the head of the warband caravan. Never one to break ranks, he controlled his breathing and slowed his pulse as he waited for the raptors to reach the front gate, listening to the angry shouts and odd muffled sobs in Zandali as a small figure he could tell was Vegnus came into view next to two elders holding staves. Some of the city guards ran out to approach the warband, running by to inspect everyone as they entered. Navarion hadn't even realized how poorly they might react before they literally threw the prisoners to the ground, causing a few of them to audibly experience bone fractures and begin screaming.

"Wait! Wait! They might have information!" Vegnus yelled while running over to the prisoners of war about two seconds away from having their heads on pikes.

"Listen to him!" Ven'jin commanded in Zandali, dropping his 'weathered wise man' act and tucking his staff beneath his arm as he ran like a healthy twenty year old. He reached a half Orc prisoner just in time to stop one of the guards from violating the prisoner with his spear.

Ahead of the others, Navarion landed and left the warband leader to receive the news from Vegnus and Ven'jin, approaching the gathering crowd when he noticed that Taiji and two other women were the ones crying.

"I don't believe it!" the female elder wept in her native tongue as the other two women clung to her. "One of our own would not join these people!"

Harald's words about an inside man assisting the bandits echoed through Navarion's mind as he tried to take in the scene. He forced himself to forget Jalinde's passing temporarily as he tried to learn the details of what had happened.

"Elder, we caught Harald. He claims their goal was to kidnap some of your young people's-"

"They succeeded!" Taiji cried out, struggling to keep the volume of her voice under control. "They took four of the children! Taran, Serju, Ka'cha, Sharkasa - they were all in the same place at the same time!"

Navarion gulped as his conversation with Sharkasa and Taran just a few hours beforehand replayed itself in his mind. The sounds of their laughter haunted him and he could almost feel the aching of their mothers' hearts. "Only those four?" he asked nervously.

Taiji calmed down a little bit, looking him in the eye in a silent plea and trying to steel her nerve enough to speak. He already knew what she would say, but he needed to hear it out loud. "Izzy was with them," Taiji sobbed, her burgundy eyes clear as glass. "They were seen playing with her near the woods by the south wall, and that's where we found the footprints. Humans and orcs, but also another of our people." She shook her head, trying not to believe what she was saying.

"The children couldn't have been the targets," Ven'jin said while joining the others. "Four random kids doesn't make any sense. They wanted Izzy, because..." He stopped himself, likely shy to finish the sentence due to some drama over the young woman's relation to Taiji. "They were after somebody important. They want to force us to bend."

"He doesn't suspect that you might try to call his bluff?" Navarion asked.

The old man shook his head. "Joachim is a demon. He's murdered child hostages before - by his own hand. He feels nothing, and he knows that his reputation is widespread. He's forcing our hand."

Hearing Joachim's name mixed into the Zandali conversation, Vegnus approached dragging Harald behind him. "It's definitely Joachim," the good dwarf said. "It's him, he's alive, and he's serious. We don't have time to wait; those kids might already be..." Vegnus cleared his throat before finishing his sentence, the forest trolls around them leaning in to listen to the short man sporting a short beard. "They might already be dead if we wait until the formal ransom letter arrives."

The leader of the warband stepped forward, and the troops and guards' ears all perked up at attention. "Let us go now!" he practically begged in Zandali. "Our troops are ready, our raptors are untested by the earlier skirmish. More can join us now. We don't have time to waste."

The older couple exchanged glances, speaking through their eyes for a moment. One didn't need to know her well to feel that Taiji may have felt embarrassed to give the order herself lest she be accused of acting only in favor of her daughter rather than the city as a whole. After their speechless conference, Ven'jin understood and tapped his staff on the ground.

"Then we move now. Joachim's men have crossed the line; they will not survive this time. Execute every prisoner here save Harald, and let any of our people who allows a bandit to live be punished." There was no shouting the order the way a human or Orc might do, nor any long pep talks one would expect from an elf. Just straight and to the point, and the tribespeople remobilized along with a dozen new additions while engaging in minimal chatter.

Despite Hogar's protests, the remaining prisoners of war were summarily executed, and the warband leader took his leave before the rest of the group was even ready, Jalinde's hunting partner at his side to guide them all to the main hideout. A few attendants directed the wagons of recovered goods inside and the witch doctor that had accompanied them carried Jalinde's body to the mortuary for the preservation process. Everyone fell into place in a flash, and it was all the cartel companions could do to get right back on their mounts.

Vegnus dragged Harald as painfully as possible across the dirt road to join Taiji, who shared a sentimental look with Ven'jin before her co-ruler and mate left with the others. Her commanding presence diminished somewhat at the same time he lost his calm demeanor, and the two of them could just have easily have been a pair of teenage lovers telling each other goodbye.

"I'll bring her back," he promised her, followed by a kiss to her forehead before he hopped up on a raptor that a child attendant led over to him. Leaving her to shut the city into lockdown and Harald to a fate assuredly worse than death, Ven'jin trotted over to the four cartel adventurers and two headhunters who were waiting for him. He eyed Navarion closely, his voodoo radiating out and greeting the young man's in a way he wasn't used to.

"Don't let us down," the elder told him in Zandali. "This is our hour of need."

The seven of them rode off, working to catch up with the warband as more stragglers rode up behind them. The stakes were much higher now, and any semblance of this being a game was lost.


	12. The Reveal

Like an unstoppable force, the Raventusk warband tore a path across the far east of the Hinterlands. Rumbling, trampling, barreling onward between the trees, they formed a natural path as the warband's leader, elder Ven'jin and the young female scout led the way to the hideout of the bandits who had plagued their development efforts for so long and, now, had kidnapped Raventusk children, the treasures considered most precious to the tribe. Like always, very little was said, and aside from the screeches of the raptors and the grunting of the headhunters, very little could be heard.

Forty soldiers rode on their reptilian dinosaur mounts, accompanied by Anchorite Traska protected in the center and Hogar amongst the infantry. High overhead, Nephentha flew with an escort of two Raventusk bat riders, their own duskbats just as loyal if not as swift as Furball.

If Navarion had wanted a sense of purpose in his life before, he sure had it now. Whether this was the way he had truly wanted it was another question.

Although there was minimal talking, the warband created plenty of noise regardless, stealth be damned. After minimal discussion between Ven'jin and the squadron leaders on the ground, it was decided that there was no way for forty fighters to sneak up on a fortified thieves' den in the mountains. The bandits would dig their heels in to the ground, throw everything they had at the tribespeople and eventually have to be wiped out one by one. The fight would be slow, plodding, violent and difficult, which was exactly what the tribespeople wanted. Both Navarion's parents and Hogar had impressed upon him the importance of fighting honorably and respecting the rights of an enemy once they surrendered and stopped fighting back. All those lessons would be lost that day, and not even the Orc veteran would be able to stop what the Raventusk were likely to do to any bandits who survived the initial breach of their fortified walls.

Above all else, everyone was told to find Joachim Woodson. The inhuman human who led the thieves had crossed a line he'd already crossed before when he had been more active a decade before. Outright terror wasn't generally his style; he preferred to enact a slow crumble of the wellbeing of various communities by leeching off the fat of their land, reselling stolen goods and resources and inflating the local economy until entire towns and villages collapsed. Only when he felt threatened did he resort to the tactics of a coward, and kidnapping noncombatants had apparently become much more feared than theft despite it being a rare tactic. Far more than the damage to people's livelihoods, the dozen or so innocent children he had apparently murdered by his own hands shocked people and made his name into a dirty word. It was his last crime against all mortal life on Azeroth - the triple murder of three child hostages from an elven lodge, human village and Orcish burrow - that resulted in the brutal but necessary assault on his last mountain hideout so many years ago. It had ended with the firebombing of his hideout, and neither his nor Harald's bodies had been found. The revelation that he had survived sent the forest trolls into a frenzy, and even Traska, usually calm and collected, seemed on edge as they marched, having apparently participated as a combat medic during the assault that led to the aforementioned firebombing. Everyone knew who public enemy number one was, and they were all prepared to gut him like a fish whenever they found him.

Except nobody knew what Joachim actually looked like. That was just another difficulty added into the mix.

At some point, Nephentha rushed forward to fly next to Navarion, yelling across the wind to catch his attention. It took a moment before he noticed she had been talking to him, and his heart still pounded in unreleased anger as he tried to listen.

"Huh?"

"I said, I see the hideout already," she yelled. "Look at the base of those small mountains, the ones that have a deep crevice in the Azeroth behind them!"

Sure enough, the bandit base sat nestled against the enclosing mountains. Walled in naturally on three sides and by huge ramparts on the fourth, the relatively small outdoor base was abuzz with activity. Multiple log cabins and open air pavilions housed unchained, unenslaved laborers who didn't appear to have any work supervisors as they sharpened weapons and assembled patchwork armor, obviously helping arm the bandits by choice. More of the bandits mobilized in between the densely packed buildings, as if they had been alerted to the warband's approach well before their arrival time. One of the batriders sent a hand signal to the warband below, and the tribespeople rode their mounts into a kind of sort of maybe battle formation as they spread among the trees, guiding the raptors to gallop just a little bit faster as they bounded for the hideout about half a mile away.

"They know that we're coming," Navarion yelled as he and Nephentha began to descend. The batriders remained high up in the air for some reason, holding out the unstable concoctions they sought to douse the hideout with a good distance away from their long noses.

"If this really was an inside job, this kidnapping, then they may know more about our assault than we'd like them to." Nephentha raised one hand to shield her goggled eyes from the sun, straining to get a better look. "Wait, Navarion - something is wrong. They have a war machine."

"I don't see anything," he replied, trying his best to get a good look. Even if he was only half night elf, he still saw better at night than he did during the day, and it would be hours before the moon would rise. "Wait..."

A large contraption made of brown logs hewn together sat behind a tall wooden shield. The detail was hard to make out as Furball rose along the natural form of another thermal in the air, and the movement caused difficulty in discerning the exact shape of the supposed war machine.

The clash of weapons from below distracted them.

"They're trying to ambush us!" Nephentha cried out as about a dozen poorly armed bandits jumped out of the trees, slashing at the mounted tribespeople as they did.

Raptor screeching filled the air and within seconds, the dozen bandit recruits likely forming some sort of a distraction were either disembowled by the raptors or scalped by the tribespeople who quickly dismounted. The blades did little more than irritate the large forest trolls, but the clamor had alerted the rest of the hideout's inhabitants to the assault, and Navarion watched as a second wave of sacrificial lambs poured out of the front ramparts on foot, arrows already flying as the two sides closed the half mile gap between them. Any semblance of organization the tribespeople displayed before were lost; the bows of the bandits had much longer ranges than the tomahawks, javelins and throwing sticks of the tribe, and the forest trolls were forced to charge forward into the oncoming volleys in order to move within striking distance.

Not that they seemed to mind. If anything, the arrows embedded in their leathery hides pushed them into berserker rage, and the few supply carriers had to rush in order to replenish each fighter's stock of projectiles fast enough.

"Where are they going?" Nephentha asked while pointing at the batriders up ahead. They had rushed forward on their own, flying high over the hideout without instruction from the leaders on the ground.

"They have some nasty chemicals they can drop on the encampment. They probably want to start some fires-"

Navarion's answer was cut off by the deafening metal clang from the base camp below. Wafting up from the war machine, a cloud of grey smoke filled the air around it as what sounded like gunpowder exploding, metal scraping on metal and wood creaking all sang in a horrible tune, echoing up through the air. By the time the bolt thrower's iron projectile had reached them at their dangerously low altitude, Navarion had barely had time to blink and double take as he realized Nephentha moved in the exact same direction that wind resistance carried the bolt.

Everything happened in slow motion. The bolt soared at a far faster rate than those the Argent Crusade used, despite the fact that the actual thrower's construction was so poor that it splintered and jammed after the first shot. Tearing a trail so roughly through the air that the ripples were almost literally visible, it connected with its target swiftly and silently. The dull point ripped a hole right through the coatl's chest cavity and the lower part of its neck, piercing the winged sea reptile's body so fast that the poor animal didn't even have time to warble before its eyes rolled into the back of its head. The bolt created a sickening sound as bone and muscle alike were pushed aside for the point to break through the custom made naga saddle on the other side. Even after losing momentum from the resistance provided by the coatl, the bolt retained enough velocity to bore into the leather banding Nephentha wore up and down her coils for light protection. Her blood spilled at the bolt ate into her hip, stopping short such that it didn't remained embedded and left the wound open. Her mouth opened in a scream when she fell, but no sound came out.

"NEPHAAAAAAAAAAAA!" Navarion screamed himself as he yanked on Furball's reins and dove.

Her staff tumbled from her hands, falling away as helplessly as she and tumbling in the distance just as her mount did. Her hands glowed briefly as a desperate tornado spell erupted around her, unfocused and uncontrolled while doing little to slow her fall. Faster Navarion dove, trying in vain to reach her in time. Loyal to his master and just as foolish, Furball dove until the bitter end, waiting for Navarion to catch Nephentha in his arms and then spreading its wings barely ten yards from the ground, failing to provide enough drag to cushion their fall.

In a heap, the three hit the ground, but they immediately tumbled against the uneven terrain, falling apart as more bones broke among the three of them. Jostled and jarred, Navarion hit a tree on his way down a hill, having rolled over completely at least three times and become lost in the shuffle of Raventusk warriors to jump over him and meet their enemy. Arrows landed in the ground dangerously close and two gunshots even rang off somewhere in the distance as he grit his teeth and relocated the shoulder he had landed on. A quick healing spell mended some of the damage to his rotator cuff and he ignored the pain in his tailbone as he frantically searched for Nephentha, being shoved aside a few times by frustrated axe throwers shouting at him to get out of the way.

"Nepha, where are you!" he cried out, desperately trying to find her.

Through the green of trees, bushes and tribespeople, he saw someone blue once more leaning over a green figure on the ground. Gone was the somber demeanor from the last battle, and the two figures shook not in melancholy but in determination as one attempted to lift the other. He sprinted the best he could, sliding into his knees in the grass as he found Traska bearing an unusual amount of stern determination on her face.

"Her wounds aren't deep," the draenei said while focusing on her task, applying pressure to the wound on Nephentha's hip.

Nephentha was by no means small - if she raised up on her coils, she might be taller than Navarion - but she was still a mage. Her body wasn't durable enough for melee combat, and the fall had taken a lot out of her. Her comparatively thin arms and hands weakly tried to cling to his once he was by her side, and her strained attempts to stifle a grimace made her look all the more delicate. Bruises and small cuts covered much of her body, but there was no swelling save the area round the wound from the bolt thrower, and his voodoo told him that her life force wasn't in danger of slipping away. When Traska began to cast a healing spell of her own, Navarion noticed that she had lost two and a half fingers on her battered left hand.

Her blood stained mace clinked against her belt, and she saw him looking. "A combat medic does engage in combat sometimes," Traska found the power of will to joke while running a quick mend of the flesh beneath the young sea witch's scales.

"Sorry for misjudging you," he apologized, searching for a hint of laughter on Nephentha's pained face.

More weapons clashed around them as a third wave of bandits poured out, defying logic as their numbers seemed to have swelled to greater than fifty as had been previously reported. They fell by the boatload beneath axes and javelins, only a single forest troll having actually died so far after taking a musket bullet to the cranium. Those who remained on the front lines were full of arrows and even a few swords, and fell back toward the healing ward placed by Ven'jin as a new wave of tribal warriors ran forward. Ignoring the clamor, Navarion left the fighting to the enraged, vengeful headhunters desperately trying to reach the hideout before Joachim could do anything rash to the four children inside.

"Help me pull her back toward the supply wagons," Traska instructed, stumbling to her feet on a cracked hoof.

Cradling his childhood friend in his arms, Navarion carried her away while dodging more charging and hollering forest trolls, cursing himself for not having thrown him self between her and the bolt thrower's path in time. She reached up a single weak hand and held on to the back of his neck, trying to get his attention as he carried her away.

"Was it my fault?" she asked in a voice barely above a whisper, an almost delirious expression on her face.

"Save your strength." He stepped wrongly on a few rocks on the way there, wrenching his back in order to avoid jerking her around in the rough terrain.

"Jalinde might have been saved if I hadn't-"

"Stop. Don't think like that. You didn't mean it, and she wouldn't let you beat yourself up over this," he scolded lightly while placing her on a light patch of clovers behind a tree, hidden among the wagons they'd appropriated from the earlier band of thieves.

Traska knelt down once more, looking around and seeing that she had no other casualties to care for. "I'll take it from here," the draenei priestess said, looking up at him and shooing him away. "Use the diversion created by the tribespeople to infiltrate the camp and find those kids."

No more convincing was required beyond that. Giving Nephentha's hand one last squeeze, he turned and ran, scanning the area for Furball as he made his way up the hill but knowing there was little he could do if he couldn't find the poor duskbat.

Toward the top of the hill leading to the hideout, he found the tribal warriors hunkering down behind boulders and trees, no longer charging forward. Beyond the canopy, he spied one of the batriders fatally crash into the cliff face at incredible speed, the body of both rider and mount filled by arrows as they both hit the solid rock with a sickening snap. The unstable chemical concoction the rider had been carrying crashed into the bolt thrower and a wooden pavilion next to it, setting both objects ablaze as thieves screamed and ran back and forth inside the ramparts. The Raventusk held firm, refusing to move forward.

"What's going on?" Navarion panted as he crawled behind Hogar and Ven'jin.

Hogar turned, much of his head concealed by his dark grey helmet. "Fire," he grumbled resentfully, pointing to the second of the forest trolls to have died.

Pulled safely behind a tree, the charred corpse could only be identified as a tribesman; otherwise, it was unrecognizable and for sure beyond resurrection, even if Traska hadn't mentioned burn wounds as a cause of death one could be brought back from. Cognition brought back his father's lesson to him and his siblings, explanations of how regeneration functioned ringing through his memory. Trolls were a resilient race, part of the reason why most of them found armor restrictive and unnecessary. They could suffer grevious wounds that would kill or maim members of other races and heal naturally in a matter of hours, eschewing magic or first aid by simply 'walking it off.' Voodoo or Druidic healing were reserved for emergency situations only, as their people as a whole preferred to recover from scars the natural way.

Except for fire. Trolls died quickly when burned.

Another Molotov cocktail flew over the ramparts, cracking ineffectively against a boulder but giving the Raventusk pause nonetheless. They appeared to be between a rock and a hard place, until their leader remembered that they had a shadow hunter in their ranks.

Ven'jin crawled closer to Navarion, talking in the most serious manner he ever had during the past month and a half. He looked the young man over for a moment, hope and skepticism mixed in his gaze. "Shadow hunter...son of your father. Do you have the power to guide our people from darkness to light?" the old man asked in Zandali using an overly dramatic tone.

Under the old man's gaze, itself alight by his voodoo, Navarion felt his mind probed for a split second. Ven'jin had the confirmation he needed, but he clearly wanted Navarion to accept the task.

"Yes...I know the big bad voodoo spell," he affirmed, realizing this would be the first time he'd ever use the ultimate spell in his arsenal in a combat situation. The Argent Crusade had plenty of Paladins for protecting their ranks, and he had always been a skirmisher. Now was the time to see if his father's coaching had paid off.

"Arise, son of the Darkspear. Cover our people so that they may enter, and not be harmed by the fires that burn," Ven'jin rasped in an even more unnecessarily dramatic tone.

The old man gave a hand signal to the supply wagon pullers, and they positioned themselves further up while remaining behind the safe cover of the trees. The inefficiency of troll warfare became apparent as Navarion saw how much their supplies of ammunition had dwindled. Wagons that could have carried perhaps hundreds or maybe more than a thousand arrows instead carried mere dozens of javelins, spears, tomahawks and hatchets, the primitive projectiles taking up more space and having a shorter range than a proper bow or gun. He could tell that the tribespeople were itching to burst through the ramparts and engage in melee combat, held back only by the threat of immolation.

"Tell me what's the plan," Hogar asked nonchalantly, ignoring a bullet that dinged off of his armor.

"They want me to cast a protective spell near the main gate. It will allow the others to become invincible, for a time, so they can take out the guys throwing liquid fire." A fourth wave of bandits ran out, foolishly confident that they would have nothing to fear despite having to meet the tribespeople far out of the rang of the fire starters. "This could be the diversion I need. I have to channel the spell for a while before it works."

"And I'll be right there with you," Hogar grunted heartily, the most emotion he'd ever displayed. The old Orc rose and banged his sword against his shield, pumping himself up for one last push to breach the hideout's defenses.

Hogar out in front, the pair both crouched low to the ground and charged up the hill, arrows and bullets dinging off the dark grey shield bearing a Steamwheedle Cartel emblem on it. A few stray bandits tried to charge, rapidly falling to the sword and sickle blades that met them before they could strike. It was a long, laborious push, stopped occasionally when they needed to wait for a rifleman atop the ramparts to be taken out by a tomahawk or two to the face. Navarion could tell that the projectile stock of the tribe was dwindling fast; they would need to breach that wall in order to stop the fire starters and replenish their ammunition by scavenging stray weapons.

"We're here!" Hogar shouted once they were just to the side of the main gate. A few goblin spearmen tried to jab at them from the other side, only to fall to Raventusk spears themselves. "Make it fast!"

Having taken the entire push up the hill to charge up his mana the best he could, Navarion closed his eyes and tried to feel the spirits in the area. Planting his feet firmly the way he and his sister Anathil had learned to, he squatted down and jumped up, slamming into the ground as he swayed into the jerky movements of the big bad voodoo. He could already feel it rising up around him, in a real, live combat situation, as he invited lost souls to join him in a dance celebrating life and death. Fel runs lit up the ground around him first and Hogar second, and a localized form of darkness took ahold of the ramparts all around him. The bandits stopped firing their bows for a few seconds, confused by the display.

The Raventusk tribespeople, being rather well acquainted with voodoo, knew what they were witnessing. Renewed gusto filled the air as Ven'jin led the charge, running headlong through the front gate of the ramparts and throwing self defense out the window. Arrows and bullets rained down onto the forest trolls, bouncing off to no effect as fel runes glowed beneath the feet of each of the tribal warriors in the general vicinity. More and more of them left the supply train in the back, and even the raptors charged, frenzied and hungry as the bandits realized their liquid fire and other weapons were useless. It was like a symphony of destruction, but one Navarion couldn't see until his spell had already fizzled out of its duration. He was still a beginner, and didn't manage to hold the spell for more than two minutes, but that was all the tribe needed to eliminate the last of the fire starters.

He gasped for air when it was done, unused to covering so many people at once via his protective shield. Hogar helped him to regain his balance and pulled him inside. "Come on, let the others clean house! We need to find those kids!"

Inside the camp, there were more bandits than had been previously counted. The main threat of fire had been eliminated, but there were still at least an equal number of bandits to tribespeople left standing, and the bad guys had the advantage of both higher ground and knowing the terrain. They ran in mortal terror from the forest trolls, trying to snipe at them from the trees, between the structures and from the rooftops of the dozen or so warehouses and barracks boasting surprisingly professional construction. The non enslaved labor were shoved into battle by a high elf who seemed to be some sort of commander, cowardice written on their faces as they wielded simple smithing tools and farming implements at their attackers. Following orders, the tribal warriors didn't even spare the reluctant forced conscripts, cutting them down as they chased around the others.

Hogar led the charge once more, as there were several wooden awnings held up by poles against the very back of the rocky camp. The mine shaft came into view as well, and if he stood up enough, Navarion could just barely see four small, trembling green figures and one adult sized green figure in a wooden cage.

His heart jumped into his throat and the entire battle behind them seemed to disappear. "That's them! That's them! Hogar, those are the kids and Izzy!"

Hearing her name, the young burgundy eyed woman began to wail, begging to be saved. Something deep and instinctual spoke to Navarion again, and he cut down a few more bandit guards who ran at them easily. Several more tried to assault them from behind, bogging them down as they found themselves unable to press on until the seemingly endless waves of poorly equipped and poorly trained flunkies flew at them.

A flash of green as the number of assailants dwindled signaled that they had finally been joined by at least one of the tribesmen, and wouldn't have to make the final push toward where Navarion assumed Joachim was hiding alone. Panting, Hogar cut another Orc in half before calling out to the axe thrower next to him.

"We're almost there!"

Furry bracers and shin guards shook, muddy and wet from the battle as the hulking green figure looked forward to the mine shaft. Every bit the perfect physical specimen from a different era, a time of dinosaurs and cavemen and no wheels or sliced bread, the impossibly muscular green man sporting a red Mohawk turned. His long, angular nose matched his sharp tusks and sharper features, accentuating the smoldering look on his face. The flask of whiskey was missing form his belt pouch, but even without his ever present tonic and underneath the face paint, Wendigo's familiar face glowered through with an unfamiliar malice.

In one fell swoop, the alcoholic brute brought his tomahawk over the gap between Hogar's helmet and his neckguard. The flint blade sunk into the orc's thick, meaty neck, failing to decapitate him outright but hitting a sort of nerve center as Hogar's left side went limp. He tried to raise is sword in time to deflect Wendigo's, but the metal short sword obviously not Raventusk design moved too quickly, boring a hole into Hogar's hauberk. Using his last bit of energy, Hogar at least managed to throat jab Wendigo, buying himself enough time to flop on the ground and roll away.

The last bandit fell on Navarion's sickle as the young half troll took a step toward Wendigo, in utter shock. Sober and seething, Wendigo shot him a look of pure contempt, displaying no remorse or shame for what he had done at all.

"You...you're the one...you're the inside man Harald spoke about," Navarion stammered, so psychotically furious that he almost couldn't form the words. The revelation caused him to physically shake in anger, knowing how the man before him had pretended to be a proud member of the community all along.

Breaking out of his slouch and standing up straight, Wendigo towered even bigger than Navarion's father, and his lungs were so powerful that the air vibrated every time he exhaled. Neither of them backed away as they stared at one another, practically daring the other to make the first move.

"Good," Wendigo hissed in his grating, unpleasant voice. "If that rat spoke, I'll take his place as second in command." Lucidity weaved itself in and out of his words, and he had no excuse for his behavior other than having a heart as bleak and corrupt as Joachim's.

"It's over, you son of a bitch. Your camp is destroyed, and your plans ruined," Navarion growled, crouching low in anticipation of the inevitable clash as he circled around his much larger opponent.

Not intimidated in the least, Wendigo stood at ease and popped his joints, as dismissive and arrogant as always. "That's where you're wrong, whelp. We have kids from the tribe. And from my people's weakness, ten thousand will negotiate their own future away for the sake of four sniveling brats."

From the corner of his eye, Navarion saw struggling at the same time the children screamed. Four little green bodies crowded in the corner of the cage furthest from the open door, and Izzy threw herself on top of them. A long haired human clad in a black leather overcoat wrestled with her, trying to pull her out of the cage as she wailed in protest. There was no more time to look, as the remaining bandits were giving the tribal warriors the runaround among the densely packed buildings, fighting tooth and nail to the bitter end. Hogar panted heavily off to the side, clutching his wounded neck as his wounded chest bled out.

"Do you think we need these vermin?" Wendigo asked while motioning toward the cowardly bandits far down the hill and between the trees. "Canon fodder and nothing more. We can pack up and restart with only a handful of men, just as boss Woodson did after the firebombing incident all those years ag-"

Navarion had heard enough. Brash anger overtook him as he launched himself into the traitor, blade outstretched to rend his opponent asunder.

But he telegraphed the move in his rage, and Wendigo caught him by the left arm rather easily. Navarion always kept that hand empty in melee combat for balance, especially so now that it had been dislocated, relocated and only lightly healed. Wendigo held Navarion's arm effortlessly, and almost looked disinterested as he deflected the sickle slice using his tomahawk. It was the first time in his life Navarion had fought against a full blooded forest troll before, and the difference in strength shocked him. Perhaps he would reminisce on he'd handled larger opponents before, but there was no time for that now - not when Wendigo had let go of his arm and sent a big, green fist crashing into his rib cage.

The air shot out of Navarion's lungs as he lost his footing, flying a few yards back as his chainmail barely provided protection against the blunt force trauma. He hit the dirt hard, sending sod and grass flying into the air as his back cut a trail into the soil. There was only a split second for him to flip over and dodge the big green foot trying to stomp on him.

"As weak as the wench your father exploited to produce you!" Wendigo shouted as his foot planted a few inches into the soil near Navarion's head.

Slicing into Wendigo's leg with his sickle, Navarion bought himself some time to scramble away and jump to his feet. Strength versus strength wouldn't work, but his mother's agility would make the not so jolly green giant regret his slander. The beastman rotated around, growling at the cut opened up in his thigh. He appeared to be taking his young opponent a little more seriously, and crouched low as he charged forward.

Wendigo's body weight was incredible despite the total absence of any body fat, and it felt like a dragonkin trampled the ground the nearer the berserker drew. Using his weight against him, Navarion ducked to the side, narrowly avoiding the axe blade as it cut into the air and bucking Wendigo's hips just slightly off balance. Enraged roar filling the area, Wendigo retained the presence of mind to twist in the air when Navarion tossed him and landed on his feet. He wasn't fast enough to avoid the sickle again, and Navarion hooked into the flesh right underneath Wendigo's shoulder blade.

Strength met strength again as the sickle embedded itself in bone, and Navarion panicked as he sought to choose between breaking his own weapon or trying to hold on. One more roar filled the air as Wendigo capitalized on the confusion of youth and flipped Navarion into the air. Feet tumbled over head as he fell forward, tearing a bit of Wendigo's flesh as Navarion hit the ground once more, losing the air out of his lungs as he scrambled to keep visual contact with his opponent. Stomps erupted in the ground once more as the savage betrayer leapt for the killing blow.

"Screeee!" rang out the echo of Furball as the crippled duskbat leapt on Wendigo's back, obscuring his view as it flapped its wings.

Rising to his feet was a struggle as Navarion tried to breathe, his vision unclear as a brown cottonball rubbed the top of a green hunk of meat. The tomahawk slid across the ground as the berserker reached up, grabbing the duskbat roughly and eliciting a pained screech. Furball flapped frantically as Wendigo shifted his grip to hold it by the rough of its neck and the tip of its tail, and the irritated brute reared his head back in preparation to gore the poor animal via his tusks.

"Argh!" Wendigo groaned, releasing Furball as Navarion sank his sickle in the brute's lower back just underneath the lower ribcage.

In one fluid motion, the shadow hunter twisted around, pulling out his blade and copious amounts of innards and flesh from Wendigo's abdomen. Before he could swing again, Wendigo reached around and grabbed Navarion by the right arm, neutralizing the sickle only for his own tomahawk cut into the back of his head. Yanking Navarion up by one hand, the giant reached back to remove his tomahawk from his head only to have it drawn away by much faster hands. The young man with a troll's face and an elf's hands and feet struck again, this time at the base of the neck as they tussled, forcing Wendigo to let go. Just as the betraying berserker snatched his tomahawk and muscled it away, Navarion sank his now free sickle into the other side of Wendigo's neck; the brute raised his weapon as if the sickle didn't hurt him at all, stopped only by the gunblast Navarion let loose right underneath his armpit, the best place to get a clear shot at somebody's heart and lungs. Body limp as Hogar's had gone, the brute collapsed like a felled redwood, hitting the ground hard and failing in his attempt to get back up. For good measure, Navarion kicked the tomahawk away, not wanting to give the man a second chance.

"You're a disgrace to your people," was all Navarion could hiss given the pounding of his heart and the pain in his shoulder and torso.

Much more defiant than Harald had been, Wendigo found the energy to roll over despite the creeping numbness in his limbs. His eyes spoke of hate, spite, bitterness, acrimony and...something else. Something deeper. There was something wrong with the man.

His lips curled over his tusks in a sneer. "May you be the bearer of my affliction now," the dying betrayer cursed, his sneer remaining on his mouth even after the life faded from his eyes. The whiskey on his dying breath sent a chill up Navarion's spine, broken only by the harsh gurgle of Hogar.

"Kids..." the injured Orc choked out just as their little cries sounded off much closer than before.

Spinning around, Navarion found all four of the children huddling between Hogar and Furball, the man and mount both sprawled out on the ground. As terrified as they were of the blood dripping from Hogar's chest, they clung to him regardless, frightened by another person entirely.

"You!" the harsh voice of a human male yelled as a slap rang out.

Up the hill, the cage that had held the four children hung open and the door hinges looked broken. Cowering away in the ground was Izzy, just coming off the receiving end of a thrashing doled out to her by a much smaller assailant. If there were ever any doubts about her softness before, they disappeared as she absorbed the slap to her cheek as terrified as one of the children would have been, so afraid was she to dare to hit her attacker back. It didn't take Navarion long to discern who the overcoat wearing human was.

"We can...get the kids...to safety..." Hogar choked while motioning to himself and Furball. Taran and Sharkasa tried to help him to his knees while Furball covered Ka'cha and Serju with its wings protectively.

His heart torn in too many different directions, Navarion yelped and ran up the hill. Images of Jalinde being surrounded, of Nephentha falling, the children crying, Wendigo cursing and Hogar bleeding mixed in with the stunning realization that the novice shadow hunter had expent all his mana on the big bad voodoo spell. He bolted, now thinking before acting as his footsteps rang far too heavily and alerted the human to his presence early on. Just barely, Izzy peeked out from her hands and stopped hiding her face to get one look at him before the man known as Joachim Woodson turned around.

The long black leather overcoat twirled, revealing simple clothing rather than armor underneath. The man's unwashed hair and uneven stubble matched his sunken eyes and rotten teeth, the entire ugly visage greeting him even more hatefully than Wendigo. Not even impressive by the standards of his people, the human's underfed frame was still intimidating in a starved, desperate sort of unnerving way made even worse by the improperly treated burn marks on the right side of his face and neck.

Arrogance, pride, avarice and pure evil emanated from Joachim's very being, and he neither flinched nor hesitated for one iota of a second at the sight of his interlocutor. The click of the hammer on the aimed pistol he had been concealing beneath his overcoat served as a poignant reminder that Navarion had foolishly left his own holstered.

Not even asking his name, Joachim didn't bother to so much as sneer. "Wrong move, kid."

The gunshot rang out loudly and before Navarion could react, the bullet had ripped a hole through his chainmail and the leather underneath. He felt the exact moment that it tore a hole into his hide and broke his collarbone before passing into whatever lied beyond. Air gone from his lungs again, he fell painlessly as feeling left his limbs and then his body. Exhaustion took over his being as his vision blurred, and only vaguely did he believe he could hear Izzy screaming his name.

Acting as if he didn't have a care in the world, Joachim took his time donning his black wide brimmed hat. Navarion commanded his body to rise yet found that he felt disconnected from it, unable to feel where he was. The last thing he could remember was a short human dragging a troll female away before everything went black.


	13. Expiation

The last of the bullies to manage to squeeze away and escape was a human teenager. Tears streamed down his cheeks and blood spurted out of his nose as Navarion dragged him by the collar of his sweat soaked shirt, tossing him to the edge of the alleyway leading out to the gutters by the sea. The teenager looked like a pathetic mess, lying on the edge of the gutter and not even trying to run away like his two cowardly friends had. Navarion wiped the blood from his own long nose on his shirt sleeve, ignoring the sting in his fat lip as he did so.

"If you ever touch anyone in my family again...if I ever hear of you passing by our house...if you ever look at anyone I'm related to for more than two seconds...I'll fucking kill you. And I'll get away with it, too."

All the defiance had been beaten out of the snooty teenager about the same time he'd watched his friends shoved face first into the brick walls of the alleyway. No amount of sucker punches could save them from the angry twelve year old, and the ringleader of the bullies lied before him a broken, sobbing mess. Unable to talk back, the human only nodded in affirmation and took the final kick to his ribs like an omega wolf, tumbling over the edge of the pavement and into the filthy gutter below. Knowing Navarion wouldn't wade into the waste material to capture him, the teenager sufficed by crying uninhibited, safe in the nasty gutter from any more blows.

Wiping the last bit of blood from his nose, Navarion walked out of the alleyway and stomped through town. Nobody at the auction house paid attention to the biracial boy as he passed them by, every man and woman for themselves as they shouted out prices and offers. They hadn't paid any attention when the three bullies began to harass an overweight socially challenged child either, and knowledge of that aloofness burned Navarion as well. Were any of them to say a word to him, he was liable to blow a fuse and start swinging at strangers.

Heat rose into his cheeks and all the way up into his skull as he walked through Ratchet, forcing himself to look down at the yellow brick roads on his way over to the bait shop where he had left his little brother. The wooden ball from the wire puzzle remained smooth in his hands as he twirled it around between his fingers. At least he had that to keep him occupied during the walk.

Finally, his pudgy little brother came into view, standing motionless behind some adult goblins ignoring him but providing cover near the entrance of the shop. Hands hanging at his sides, he stared at Navarion as the older brother reached him, brow dripping and sweaty.

Not even asking permission, he took the wire puzzle from Zengu and worked the wooden ball back inside. It took a moment to figure it out, and he worked hard to avoid bending the wires as he worked it.

"They didn't even want to play with it or anything. I found it set down on a stone barrier near the sandglass store," Navarion explained in a detached manner as he tried to solve the puzzle without making himself angry again. "Assholes. They just took it just because."

For a moment he doubted he would be able to work the wooden ball back in between the wires. The puzzle certainly did frustrate him, and was amazed at how his borderline mute younger brother could solve it so quickly and easily. Sliding the wires in a certain formation was supposed to allow the ball to slip in and out easily, but damned if Navarion just couldn't figure it out. At last, he fumbled around just enough that the wires fell into place due to no actual understanding on his part, and the puzzle returned to its unsolved state. It had a strange calming effect on him, and by the time he had finished his heart rate had slowed and his anger largely subsided.

"I think it's fine now...what?" Navarion asked in shock as he felt Zengu's chubby arms wrap around him.

He looked down and found his nine year old brother clinging to him, the chubby cheeks tucked tightly against his shoulder. Stubby fingers hooked onto his shirt, holding on as if for dear life as the overweight little brother refused to let go. Dampness invaded Navarion's shirt once more, and he realized that his own blood and sweat mixed with Zengu's tears. The smaller boy didn't shake as he cried, containing himself just barely such that the goblins discussing a dispute game of billiards only took two steps away before they felt comfortable around the two tall children again.

Awkwardly, Navarion almost hugged Zengu before clamping his hands onto the puzzle again, unsure of what to do. The outward display of his feelings was rare for the shy child, and confusion filled his brain as he tried to figure out what was wrong.

"Hey...it's okay, man. I know I screwed up, but you have your ball back, right?"

Zengu only shook his head into Navarion's shoulder, crying a little more as he failed to explain what was wrong. Worried that he might be blamed for the whole incident, and knowing that he was at least partially responsible, he tried his best to comfort his brother.

"It's alright...they won't bother you again," Navarion whispered, wishing Zengu would at least let go while he cried. The younger brother's cries gradually died down, and Navarion thankfully felt like he could stop patting his brother on the back. "I'm sorry I ditched you, okay? It won't happen again,man's these guys won't ever touch you again."

Even after he had stopped crying, Zengu continued to cling to his shirt and shook his head into it. The outpouring of emotion was rare, and Navarion began to get the feeling that he shouldn't stifle it even if he wanted to. The pudgy younger brother pulled away, looking up at him while the last few tears dripped from his amber eyes. His normally blank expression transformed into one of admiration, and it became clear that his tears weren't in resentment or disappointment at the older brother.

He sniffled, but true to his paranoid hygienic nature he didn't wipe his nose on his sleeve, pointing to Navarion's pocket in a silent request for a handkerchief instead. "Thank you," he mumbled while blowing his nose.

Navarion couldn't understand what he was being thanked for, and looked at the younger brother in a confounded manner. When Zengu didn't elaborate, he asked him bluntly. "Thanks for what? I left you unattended and you had your property stolen because of it."

Zengu looked as if the statement didn't faze him at all, and there was no visible decrease in his sense of admiration and respect. "It doesn't matter now. You brought it back to me." The tears stopped abruptly, and his brother returned to his old shy, soft spoken self again. "People can make up for their mistakes."

The statement was made with such sincerity and conviction that, for once, Navarion almost felt like being the one to hug his brother rather than the other way around. Zengu even smiled, a rarity for him as he began to fiddle around and solve and resolve the puzzle once more. The two of them forgot Navarion's friend and went for a walk on their own. Very little was said, but the time spent together mended wounds on its own.

The salt of the sea at the port of a Ratchet, however, was a world away at that point. It was refreshing, freeing, alluring no matter how many times he claimed he didn't miss it. Gone were the scents of the ocean water and the spices being sold at the docks, replaced by the smell of dirt and gunpowder.

The black that had replaced his vision broke at the middle, hanging off to the sides and blotting out his peripheral vision even as the center of his view gradually regained its color. The clash of the last few bandits striking their weapons against incoming tomahawks and javelins rained behind him, and the gradually fading cries of the children as they were led away to safety removed yet another burden and distraction from him.

Devoid of mana, Navarion ignored the bone spurs from his broken collar bone and hoped that his regeneration would kick in soon enough to handle some of the repair process. Air returned to his lungs as long as he inhaled slowly and in a certain way, a way he had to feel out as consciousness returned to him. The ripped flesh and internal tissue beneath stung him in the form of a dull ache as he awoke, and he ignored the strain of rising to his feet. Leaving the bullet lodged in whatever it had become lodged in, he forced himself to stand and shut his eyes as much as he could. They stung in a salty manner as if he had taken a dip at the beach back home, and when he opened them again he could just barely make out the figure of a human wearing a black overcoat dragging a much larger but totally docile green figure, skipping the mine shaft and forcing her into a mountain crevice leading to a path beyond.

His left shoulder sore from the earlier dislocation and his right shoulder stinging from the bullet lodged inside it, his entire upper body throbbed at every step. Shuffling as fast as he could at first, Navarion grit his teeth even more tightly and forced himself to walk forward. If Joachim could escape, he would likely keep Izzy alive for a period as he demanded ransom payments from the locals, even after possibly killing her in secret. And once he got away, he could disappear again, setting up camp near another neglected community and putting them through the same ordeal once more. There was too much at stake here both for him, the tribe and the region as a whole.

Picking up speed, Navarion allowed his arms to dangle at his sides as he ran. His voodoo stayed with him whether he was injured or not, and he sought out the souls of the living in his vicinity. Just around the bend and beyond the crevice, he could sense squirrels, chipmunks, other critters and two sentient beings, one tall and one short, barely out of his view. He sensed them, and he followed them, making sure to keep just a little bit of distance between them for safety's sake; he didn't need to put Joachim on edge. Not yet.

His targets moved slowly, but not due to a real struggle. On the other side of the rocky sides of the ravine he followed them in to, he could sense Izzy collapsing, shaking, needing to be literally dragged along by Joachim as her legs gave out from fright. She could have ripped his head off had she tried, but the shy village girl simply tried begging for mercy instead. Not mercy, but machination was the only reason Joachim hadn't shot her by now. That, and it took at least five seconds to reload a handgun, as opposed to a rifle which could be reloaded in two. The scumbag was smart; the paranoia emanating from his soul was powerful.

A cough, and Navarion tasted the blood coming out of his throat. Every step was agony and he knew he wouldn't be able to sneak up on the human or overtake him. His mana wasn't even sufficient to have cast his heal spell, so covering Izzy using the voodoo of his war dance was out of the question.

Crunching his feet into the gravel a mere ten yards around a bend beyond which Navarion could sense a big emptiness, he made his presence known. Joachim's reaction was fast, and he already dragged Izzy in front of him and shoved the pistol in her ear.

"One more step and I'll open her head!" came the human's hoarse, bourbon and tobacco scarred voice. He hunched over defensively and trained his eyes on the outcropping behind which Navarion hid, pressing the barrel of his gun into the young lady so as to elicit even more sobs.

"Bullshit, you'll have nothing to bargain with and no time to escape before I open up yours," Navarion shouted right back at him, allowing his own blood to run down his throat in order to avoid choking on the words. "There's only one way out of this!"

Navarion's heart pounded hard both in anticipation of the coming gunshots and under the duress of keeping him alive and breathing. Joachim growled audibly, but made no move to so much as strike Izzy, being smart enough to know that if he wasted his bullet on anybody other than the wounded but still dangerous young man around the corner, he'd be dead himself. Through the rock, Navarion could sense a hand gripping steel raise up off the ground, and a pistol pointed midway up from the ground - to high for Navarion to jump and too low for him to duck. The human pulled the forest troll female up by her hair, using her to shield most of his own body from a potential countershot. He was well protected, and despite knowing every movement Joachim made, there was very little Navarion could do - the empty space behind gave Joachim wide berth to zig zag away, and in his state Navarion wouldn't be able to aim properly at a distance. He didn't have time to wait for others to join him.

He crouched, this time doing his best to conceal the sound. Heart pounding, shoulders throbbing, head spinning, he flushed out the echoes of the past chiding him for all the mistakes he'd made up to that point - from sending the four children and Izzy to play together until nightfall in the first place to not realizing who Joachim's inside man had been until it was too late for Hogar. Everything was shoved deep into the darker parts of his psyche as he leapt sideways, aiming to hit himself against the opposite rock wall for support.

Joachim had been ready. The old rat had done this too many times, murdered too many people in duels, gone through the motions of ditching his henchmen and running out the back door of a hideout so often that he viewed it as ritual. He squeezed the trigger and fired at his target, not caring that Navarion had thrown his left arm in the way; the bullet tore through the chainmail and leather once more and ripped into the young man's upper arm, not wounding him fatally but putting enough system shock and blood loss to prevent him from giving chase. Had Navarion readied his blade on his right hand, it would have been the crowning achievement for Joachim's mockery of the young man's futility.

But the blade wasn't readied. Instead, Navarion had something else in his hand. Something he correctly guessed the human wouldn't have seen before.

After the bullet made impact but before his body hit the wall, the young shadow hunter had already prepared the bundle of sticks and bones in his hand. Rearing it up behind his back, he swung down before he jumped, ensuring that momentum wouldn't be too slowed down when he finally took the bullet. Even the searing pain in his upper arm didn't stop him as he cast the ward forward, the cursed turtle shell clattering as the voodoo stick embedded itself in the ground in an almost sentient matter.

One fraction of a second later and the stasis trap had sprung, shooting fel runes across the ground that left Izzy untouched, sensing the good in her. On the other hand, Joachim had been pulled to the ground so quickly by the unstoppable force that he didn't even have time to grunt or growl. His pistol tumbled from his hands sliding far beyond his reach as the runes hummed, pinning him helplessly to the ground.

Navarion slumped against the wall, a sense of weariness settling in as he realized that his plan had worked. No sooner than had he closed his eyes did Izzy fling her self at him, crashing her lips against his before he had a chance to breathe properly. She knocked him over, smearing his blood on her hide and furry bra but she didn't seem to care. He laughed into their kiss, much of the pain he had felt dissipating as she expressed her thanks in a more physical way. It wasn't as passionate so much as frantic, like she'd found an oasis after being stranded in the deserts of Tanaris. Using his elbow, he pushed them both into a sitting position without breaking their connection,mellowing her to straddle his hips. When she pulled back, some of his blood was on her lips, and a look of alarm spread on her face for a second.

"They're just flesh wounds," he reassured her, chuckling as she kissed the exposed leather on his neckguard to wipe the blood from her mouth.

She opened her mouth to say something, but a muffled attempt to speak on the part of Joachim caught their attention. Unable to even move, his vocal cords refused to o eye his command, gurgling instead. Slight movement could be seen beneath his sprawled out overcoat, probably him attempting in vain to somehow reach his pistol.

Not wanting to give him a chance to even speak his last words, Navarion gripped the rock wall in the ravine for balance and Izzy helped him to stand, stepping back from him when he flexed his hand one last time and sent the sickle blade shooting outward. Pained but methodical steps took him over to the man possessing a heart as rotten as his teeth, bitter to the very end.

"People will talk, once your head is on display at Raventusk City to confirm you're really dead," Navarion spat at the human. "They'll talk, they'll move on and they'll forget. You'll just be another anonymous highway robber skewered on the side of the road as a warning."

Bloodshot, sullen eyes shone as the defiance turned to burning rage and finally a clear, undeniable depression. One could almost feel the sense of failure, loss and worthlessness coursing through Joachim's very core in his last moments before the sickle came down onto the nape of his neck.

By the time Izzy had helped Navarion walk back out of the ravine and through the crevice next to the mine shaft, the bodies of the fallen thieves had already been set on fire out of disrespect. Further down the hill the camp appeared abuzz as some of the tribespeople tried to corral the raptors while others scavenged what they could. The fires on the structures themselves had been put out, and the burned out walls had been knocked over to avoid any potential accidents.

Ven'jin, the young scout and the squadron leader were waiting there, their eyes alight when she saw Joachim's severed head hanging from Navarion's belt by the unwashed hair and his body dragged behind by the overcoat. Izzy wore the human's rather smallish wide brimmed had as a sort of macabre trophy, but it tumbled off as she ran forward to the man who was more or less her stepfather.

"We had no idea where you all went!" Ven'jin cried out in Zandali, stopping himself short before actually going to far as to hug the young lady in view of others. "We thought he had escaped and taken you."

"He almost did, I was so scared! But..." Izzy turned back to Navarion, eyeing the half elf with less lust and more sincere thanks for once. "Things turned out alright in the end."

The other two forest trolls appeared to notice something was going on between the two young people and both looked confused. If anything, it made Navarion smile even more, even if he didn't quite know why. Ven'jin contained his reaction, possibly uneasy at the thought of the way his stepdaughter looked at the helpful but very different outsider - although still in a way that was more curious than rude, unlike almost every other factional settlement Navarion had ever visited.

As if he remembered some significant news, Ven'jin patted Izzy on the shoulder and directed her to join the scout and the squad leader, stepping forward for a private word with Navarion. The young man hoped it might be a sort of acknowledgement of the relationship; what he was met by instead was about as far from such matters as one could imagine.

"Follow me," the old man said blankly, an unreadable emotion just behind his features. The young man followed, not saying a word as the seriousness in Ven'jin's tone already started to worry him.

Down the hill they walked, dodging around elated tribespeople boasting of the numbers of thieves they'd all killed - which totaled to about three times the number of actual thieves that had been there when added together - and tearing open sacks of stolen provisions, broken weapons and even sand for cement as they looted the camp of the looters gleefully. Ven'jin's silence became worrying, and when they passed the four children - Sharkasa, Taran, Ka'cha and Serju - all weeping and clinging to Furball behind a tool shed, Navarion knew something was wrong.

Ven'jin stopped just before an open air workshop bearing only two walls. Those tribespeople who had been injured enough, and whose egos were tamed enough, to require medical care were sprawled out on the grass or leaning against trees. Most of them were laughing and talking the injuries off, and a few were even openly smoking peyote to relax after the battle, Horde prohibition laws be damned. After taking in the scene, Navarion turned to Ven'jin again, already expecting what came next.

"His body is hardy, like most of his people," the old man mumbled sadly, "but there is little we can do due to the nature of his injuries. I think his urgent need to see you is all that's kept him alive this long."

Navarion hadn't even had time to properly cope with Jalinde's death; he had merely repressed his negative emotions and stuffed them down, failing to find any sort of release in slaying Joachim. He knew Hogar perhaps even less because of the orc's soft spoken nature, but the man's connection to Navarion's father caused the news to hit his cardiovascular health hard once again. At least, he forced himself to think, he would get to say goodbye this time. He didn't have that opportunity before the high elven ranger passed on.

"Thank you, elder," the young man sighed, already feeling the tension mount in the muscles in the back of his neck.

"I'll leave you to it, then," Ven'jin mumbled while walking away to set down more healing wards near the wounded.

Left by himself, Navarion winced and ignored the recurring pain in both shoulders and now his arm. He wouldn't have time to bask in the glow of one of the wards, and tried his best to even focus on the physical pain a bit to distract his conscious self from the rising anxiety. Slow, plodding footsteps carried him around the corner of the workshop, bloodstains on the grass guiding him. The far side of the structure faced the sheer rock wall, providing a measure of privacy. As he had found her so many times before, Traska was kneeling over a limp body on the ground, her emotions not entirely under her control.

Hogar's armor didn't move, and it was hard to tell if he was still breathing, but his eyes were open. He leaned against the wall, bracing his hands on the ground to keep himself sitting up. A large amount of gauze had been bandaged around his neck, but the hold in his armor bled freely. His entire body looked lifeless, and Navarion winced again as the image of the tomahawk hitting Hogar's neck forced itself into his memory.

Hogar saw him and smiled warmly, not even flinching at the pain he must have been experiencing. He looked tired, as if he wanted to sleep, but also looked unperturbed by his plight. When Navarion knelt down next to him, a chuckle found its way out of the Orc veteran's throat. "I can't feel my left side," Hogar chortled in a voice just a bit higher than usual in pitch and a bit lower than usual in volume. His spirits appeared high even as the voodoo claimed that his soul was slipping away for good.

"I'm sorry...I should have...been faster," was all the young man could find to say, trying to wrap his head around the idea that tomorrow, Hogar wouldn't be there anymore even when he'd been there all along before the battle.

Cool and collected as always, Hogar closed his eyes and smirked, shaking his head. "When the reaper calls, everybody answers. It happens to all of us." When Navarion's jaw practically hit the ground at how well Hogar was taking his own death, the older man chuckled once more and twitched his barely functioning right arm, touching his belt pouch. "I need you to take something to your pops. Something that has meaning to both of us. In here."

Face contorted in stress as he tried to blot out the words, Navarion did as he was asked regardless, and reached into the pouch. Inside, he found a short wooden shard that had been filed into what once may have been a sharp point, now dulled by age. From what he knew of his father's stories, it was a shiv, a crude stabbing knife prisoners would make out of whatever material they found available. He held it gingerly between his fingers, trying to think of which pocket he could keep it in to best guarantee that it wouldn't be damaged.

"He'll know what it means," Hogar said weakly, his voice beginning to slip.

"You have my word; I'll see to it that he receives it, and the news," Navarion promised, amazingly finding the sheer power of will to prevent his own voice from cracking.

The three of them sat there for a few moments longer, none of them wanting to talk and neither Navarion nor Traska wanting to leave. The orcs were a sociable and sentimental people, and Navarion knew that waiting out the man's last moments would mean a lot to him. The sounds of Hogar's breathing became more and more faint as the seconds ticked by, and it was clear how little time the Orc had left; had Navarion arrived just a minute or so beyond when he actually had, it may have been to late. Hogar's eyes began to flicker open and closed, and he struggled to remain awake as long as he could, pain or not, in silence or not. Traska held his good hand and he appeared to try and hold back, smiling and perhaps even humming to himself if Navarion's ears weren't playing tricks on him.

Before he left completely, he looked up at Navarion one more time. Hogar's eyes spoke of a sweet serenity that was enviable even given his situation, and the happiness that always defined the Orc somehow increased tenfold. His speech soft but very clear, he made one final request.

"Tell me...what's peace..."

Pursing his lips for a moment, Navarion felt torn as he fought between his ego and fear of outward displays of emotion and granting the hero a dying wish. Not even caring if his hurt showed, he made his choice and obliged.

"Peace is...taking the problems life throws at you and solving them. Peace is spending years in prison for a crime you didn't commit, and emerging only to do good in the world that wronged you. It's knowing that you have no living family members and no permanent residence, and finding people in the world to devote your life to anyway. Peace is...knowing you did the best you could."

"Hmmm..." Hogar hummed again, sounding quite a bit like Navarion's father as he closed his eyes and smiled. True peace shone through on the orc's face in a way the young man had never seen before, and the entire area lit up from the true content wafting off of him. Even in death, even after his soul left his body, the smile remained plastered on his face, and the Orc warrior who had been framed for murder so many decades ago only to become a traveling hero without a drop of bitterness in him died the way he probably had wished for.

Pity filled Navarion's heart as he held Traska and helped her stand up. As the main healer for the group, she'd spent quite a bit of time mourning, draining herself of energy, watching people she cared for die helplessly and, to top it all off, became permanently handicapped after losing two and a half fingers. He hadn't known her before, but once they left Hogar's body in the care of two axe throwers assigned as gravediggers, he made sure to spend most of the time during the camp cleanup and dismantling with Traska and Nephentha, trying his best to give the draenei some form of respite as he let her talk it all out.

There were no elaborate speeches at the end. No sermons, no eulogies, no time wasting or even real mourning.

Per Orcish tradition, Hogar had been buried where he died in a grave marked only by a simple piece of wood bearing his vital information. Everyone would end up in the ground eventually, his people tended to say, and the wealth and prestige you had in life wouldn't matter anymore. The forest trolls found it strange, but obliged at Traska's insistence.

Only four of the forest trolls' own had passed away: the headhunter whose head had been hunted by a rifleman, two axe throwers who had been hit directly by Molotov cocktails and the batriders whose bat had been sniped in midair. As had been done with Jalinde, their bodies were wrapped in sheets - these ones pilfered from one of the bandit cabins - and loaded in wagons to be mummified and interred back at the city. Those who were wounded were miraculously healed by a combination of their regeneration and the healing wards, and even Nephentha had found the strength to stand by the end, though she was still relegated to riding in one of the wagons. Thankfully, the tribespeople had the foresight not to kill any of the stolen horses at the camp this time.

Amid the burning bodies of bandits, the tribespeople had recovered copious amounts of stolen opals, gold, copper, lumber and profession tools - far too many to fit on their wagons. The deceased took priority, and in the meantime Ven'jin ordered a contingent of twelve axe throwers and raptors plus the last batriders to stay behind and keep watch; a second caravan of empty wagons would be sent for the rest of the stolen goods in time.

Those who were returning to the city that night congregated at the exit while saying their goodbyes and cracking jokes to those who would stay behind, behaving in an entirely nonchalant manner as if they hadn't just slaughtered a few dozen bandits and saved four children who had been under the threat of outright murder by a psychopath. The squadron leader gave Joachim's head to the young scout who had lead them there to stick on her pike, garnering hollers and catcalls from the other women.

Both amused and disgusted at how the offering of a severed head was considered flirting for the tribe, Navarion settled onto an extra large highlands thrasher and helped Izzy hop on behind him. One of the smaller female axe throwers rode Furball, who initially had actually tried to let the four children ride him, losing out after Ven'jiin's protests.

"Take me home," Izzy purred in an overacting sort of way, giggling along with Navarion at the cliche line she'd probably read in what few romance novels were available in such a remote area.

He clicked his heels into the raptor's sides, riding ahead of the group. "Your wish is my command...just go easy on me once we arrive," he chortled.

Izzy wrapped her arms around his waist and let out a little yip as they rode. Once the raptor reached more flat ground at the bottom of the hills, she leaned forward and bit his trapezius muscle, testing out her stepfather's healing. "The bullet's been removed. You're well rested." The rest of the warband rolled out as well, torches lit to lead the way back to the city under the night sky. "I can make you un-rested," she whispered, using a cheesy and not entirely clear line but a sultry enough voice to make her intent understood.

He shifted his back in such a way that she shuddered against him, and he relaxed as the thrasher flew across the soil and on into the night. By the time they reached the city, Navarion had finally relaxed his mind a bit, convinced that everything was fine.


	14. Self-Unawareness

Navarion wore plainclothes for the first time in many weeks as he dressed himself that afternoon. It felt great to wear a simple shirt again instead of a leather jerkin and some chainmail, and he grinned wide as he flexed his fully healed shoulders back and forth.

"You can almost feel it in the air, can't you?" he asked the deaf blood elf crew member rhetorically. He wasn't even facing the man, and for sure the guy had no idea he was talking anyway, but Navarion was too elated to care. "We achieved something here. We really did make a difference."

He stretched his back, finding that for the first time since the battle at the bandit camp, his muscles weren't sore. It had taken him three days to recuperate, sleeping off much of his time as he switched between sulking over the loss of two people close to him, shirking his patrol duties to rest his wounds and being invited for meals by various locals grateful for the work the cartel had done for them. As low key and informal as always, the meals and their associated conversations had been light, and the tribespeople had given Navarion plenty of time to rest, repair his armor, recover his wards and help clean up camp. There was plenty to do in the last three days before the arrival of the first foreign ship - the Steamwheedle Cartel ship set to take stock of what the locals had to trade and to decommission the construction phase of their operations there. So busy had he been that he'd only passed Izzy twice, had no time to actually speak to her at length, and had only been able to attend a single meeting at the longhouse where Taiji and the parents of the four kidnapped children officially expressed their gratitude to the cartel.

Finally, with official business out of the way and his decommissioning document ready for his signature in the cartel ship, Navarion would be able to set about his new life after what hadn't been his biggest adventure, but what had felt like the one where he had made the biggest impact as an individual. He inhaled the crisp air outside when he exited the tent, a pleasant odor of ocean salt from the shore added to the mountain air descending from the high ridges to the west. Far, far in the distance, those grey-blue ridges were just barely visible, a stark contrast to the flat veldt of the Barrens or the smothering canopy of Ashenvale. One day the Hinterlands would be tamed, he thought, but that day would be a long time coming.

Most of the crew members had already disassembled their tents and packed their supply crates. Most of them would actually be leaving on the ship, and traveling on to new construction and maintenance projects elsewhere; the work was never finished for Steamwheedle. The clearing where their camp had been for over two months looked empty after so much of the equipment had been moved to the docks, a signal that his time in service of those other than himself had come to an end.

Feeling like a million gold pieces, the biracial young man strutted down the dirt roads, passing by numerous residential huts on his way to the pier. The workers had constructed a control office there to represent the cartel presence at Raventusk City, and there would be a brief meeting their to officially end the job and dole out new assignments to those remaining on board. All the way there, locals passed him like normal, treating him as if her were one of their own and going about their business without fanfare. A handful waved to him while passing about on their daily chores, but for the most part he had become accepted. It was a great feeling, to have a place to be where he was just normal, and his suede shoes squeaked on the ground as the brand new docks came into view.

They were quite a sight, really. Not quite as elaborate as the port of, say, Ratchet or Stormwind, but for an overgrown village they did stick out. Three large piers jutted out into the sea, ready to service medium to moderately large sized cargo and passenger ships. The size of them were daunting and, when the project started more than two months ago, he had honestly doubted that it would be finished on time due to the slow work rate of the tribespeople. Give the sheer number of unemployed, however, the elders had simply thrown more and more labor at the project until the twelve cartel laborers ended up working shifts twenty four hours a day to supervise the overly eager Raventusk workers. When they saw that their manual labor could cause tangible differences in short amounts of time, they took to the project with gusto, and locals not even involved in the project began to expand the city's stock of smaller vessels for fishing and local transport. Already, numerous Raventusk boats hauled in salmon, lobsters, clams and one even dragged in a whale for blubber and meat. A shipyard had been built under supervision of Vegnus despite that not having been part of the deal, and he promised to negotiate with the incoming Steamwheedle ship for a proper shipwright to be sent to train younger locals. Altogether, the project had been completed astoundingly well, both ensuring the future of a formerly stagnating, overpopulated remote city and guaranteeing the cartel duty free imports and exports for a good amount of time.

Speaking of which...the first ship appeared to have already arrived and moored next to the Steamwheedle operations office, off to one side.

Picking up the pace, Navarion hurried across the dirt road leading to the docks, enjoying the rustic path as more locals passed by him casually. He could already see some of the cartel workers congregating outside, and some of them were people he didn't recognize - members of the recently arrived ship's crew. Just barely, he could spot Nephentha's serpentine tail beyond the doorway to the office, and he pushed past all the goblins, orcs and humans to make his way inside.

Benches and chairs filled a large reception area ringed by maps and charts all over the walls; goblins were never the type to leave an inch of space unused. He could see Vegnus seated with one of the big bosses from Ratchet behind the long reception counter and in the back room, and felt a little embarrassed that he may have missed some of the meeting. Nephentha already spotted him and dragged him behind the counter, her movements fluid and uninhibited since her wounds had fully healed.

"I've been looking all over for you, you're late," she whispered in Nazja, never seeming to enjoy speaking Common to him when they were away from others.

"Sorry, I took my time getting ready this morning. It's just been a while since we were able to wake up not in pain or on a twelve hour shift." The office had been constructed according to the size of smaller races, and he had as much difficulty as she did squeezing around all the laughing, chatting off duty sailors and laborers in order to fit behind the counter.

She tugged him forward past two local forest trolls who had been recruited into the cartel; apparently there weren't enough ogre sized uniforms and they simply wore Steamwheedle armbands in addition to their loincloths and sandals. Nephentha actually had to push the back of Navarion's neck down before he hit his head on the doorway leading to the back room, so euphoric was his feeling at being able to sign off and be done with servitude.

Vegnus, Traska, the warband squad leader and numerous goblins turned to greet them as they walked in. At the head of the table sat Gazlowe Junior, son of the founder of Ratchet and a shrewd businessman in his own right. True, he had taken over his father's position as head of Ratchet, but only through hard work and raw talent; Gazlowe Senior had never been one to put nepotism before efficiency. Unlike many of the other goblins, Gazlowe Jr.'s head and limbs were proportional to his body and he actually had a discernible neck, truly looking like an adult of a small race rather than an overgrown child of a tall race. Navarion had even heard non goblin women describe the young businessman as handsome, but his shark's grin evoked serious rather than suave.

"Hey, Hearthglen, right?" Gazlowe Jr. asked in a friendly enough manner. "Take a stool, your supervisor here already debriefed us and has everything ready."

He took time pulling a wheeled cushion over for Nephentha first, taking extra care to put on a gentlemanly act when people from his home town were observing. Vegnus shot him a stern look, though whether it was due to Navarion's lack of punctuality or false display, the young man did not know. Once he had himself situated, the sheet bearing the acknowledgment statement of having completed his assignment was slid in front of him before anyone else spoke. If there was one thing he loved about goblins the most, it was that they didn't waste time or mince words.

"Thanks, uncle Vegs," the young man murmured while he read over the agreement quickly.

"For those of you not on regular contracts, of course there's just a cash payout; no insurance coverage or company accounts involved," Gazlowe Jr. explained gleefully. He had likely gone through this monologue before, but harping about rules and regulations never seemed to tire the short green man. "You're free to go at your own leisure, and of course the door is always open whenever you're ready to sign up for your next assignment. Or for a long term work contract. It's your funer...I mean, choice. Right."

It only took Navarion a second to sign, eliciting just as big a grin from the businessman upon seeing another obligation ended. "I might check in with you guys in the near future, but for now, I'll be hanging around here a bit," he said, not paying attention to what he was saying just as the goblins didn't appear to be paying attention to it as they counted his wage, produced a compact iron container and then deducted the cost of the container from his wage before he would notice.

Nephentha snorted her surprise at his claim of remaining behind, and Vegnus' already tight lips pursed even tighter, to the point where they almost turned white. Noticing the tension but not knowing the source, Traska tapped the fingernails of her good hand on the table next to the angry dwarf. "Perhaps we should review the actual plans for your departure here with your organization's supervisor."

At that comment, Gazlowe Jr.'s eyes actually did light up in interest. "Yeah, actually I was wondering about your estimated time of arrival. We could really use your skills at the project over in Dustwallow."

"It's been a good number of decades since what happened in Theramore," the sole human member of the cartel management representatives sighed sadly. "It sure will be nice for the renewal project to kick off."

Looking at the table for a moment to calm his nerves, Vegnus cleared his throat to speak. "We fully intend to participate in the reconstruction project, but it's been a long few years in the Eastern Kingdoms. We wouldn't really mind some down time back home in Ratchet first."

"So I've been told," Gazlowe Jr. mumbled while scribbling on a schedule of labor divisions and movement of ships and material that had been slipped over to him.

"We heard the next passenger ship heading to the new port here will cast off for Northrend, which isn't where we need to go. I have a dear Forsaken friend back in Ratchet who negotiated for us to enter New Southshore. From there, we can take-"

"Our first cartel ship sailing to and from a Forsaken port," Gazlowe Jr. interrupted politely, but wanting to get to the point. "You have a whole week; I'm assuming you'll fly to Arathi and then take the overland route into Hillsbrad?"

"Yes, exactly, and we expect to be there about a day ahead of time for the voyage back to Ratchet," Vegnus confirmed.

"Six days. Got it. You and Nepha here, right?" The goblin kingpin continued scribbling, trying to keep an accurate record of where his workers would be at any given time.

Vegnus stared at Navarion long and hard, but the young man refused to return his gaze. None of the goblins even took notice, all of them too enveloped in their note taking and calendar marking to pay attention. Not wanting to let the tension linger, Navarion answered for them. "Yes. I might join up at a later time."

Finished after some furious scribbling, Gazlowe Jr. looked up, dissolving the tension via his upbeat demeanor and complete lack of awareness of the acrimony in the room. "Alright then, good stuff! Now, for the bad stuff. Hogar was a beloved member of our organization, but unfortunately he left no next of kin. He didn't own much, in fact everything fit inside his foot locker back in Ratchet."

"I'll collect his things," Vegnus sighed in defeat. A mixture of residual disappointment toward Navarion and sadness over the loss of their friend danced around on the short beared dwarf's face, rendering him unable to continue the staredown across the table.

"Anchorite Traska, we greatly value the sacrifice Ranger Summerdrake made for the sake of our project and the wellbeing of this settlement," the goblin boss said, sincerity laced in his voice but a cold formality written into the almost flowery words. "We've provided an escort to accompany you back to Quel'danil Lodge, and it should be able to transport you and the dear Ranger back home in about three days. I trust the Raventusk have properly preserved her remains."

"They have," Traska replied sadly, her expression blank.

"We'd like ta send an envoy with ya, if ya approve," the squad leader asked in his accented Common. "We really were touched ta have one of tha Sindorei provide help for tha future of our city."

Traska nodded, saying nothing as she rubbed her mangled left hand with her right. Oblivious to the multiple sources of tension and melancholy in the room, Gazlowe Jr. stood up and clapped his hands in celebration. "Meeting adjourned, then!" he chirped as the other cartel bosses began filing out of the room. "Good working with all of you, and everybody knows where they need to go. Be good!"

Vegnus had already left the room by the time Navarion found the space to stand in the cramped area, as had most of the others. The broad shouldered squadron leader blocked the entire doorway from view as he squeezed himself through, and Navarion was once again drowning in a sea of people as he made his way out of the building. By the time he could see clearly again, he spied Nephentha looking at him from just outside the door of the small building.

Snakelike eyes glassy but unmoving, she pursed her lips at him in a line the same way Vegnus had inside, albeit in a much less strained manner. She wrung her four wrists in front of her, looking in front of herself on the docks before looking back up at home. Despite his determination, he felt the sense that his childhood friend felt let down by his decision, and even if it didn't push him far enough to question his choice, he did feel the guilt. Navarion stood and looked back at her, sad not because they were saying goodbye - he'd said goodbye to friends and family far more times than most people his age - but because he could see she had hoped to see one of the Hearthglen siblings who had been her companions for so long return home again. He wished he could tell his friend it would be alright, that he was still the same person, and that he would see them all again back home one day. He wished he could alleviate her fear that their community would be losing him once more. He wished he could do something.

But he hesitated too long, and she took that as his answer. Head hung low, the young reptilian woman slithered off after Vegnus, looking back only once as she did.

Always the master of repressed feelings and self delusion, Navarion quickly swallow the negativity down. Walking outside and breathing in the ocean air, he worked extra hard to rationalize it in his mind. It was his life, he told himself. His family and friends back in Ratchet cared about him, and in that case they had to understand that he was his own person, making his own decisions. He repeated a hundred and one mantras in his head as he walked down the developed portion of the docks and onto the open area between the opal mine and the far, far away northern wall of the city.

The wind blew his mane about slightly, tickling his ears the way he and Izzy had done for each other during their ride back form the bandit camp a few nights ago. If he closed his eyes as he strolled under the afternoon sun, he could almost smell her on the wind. Earth and ozone filled his nostrils as he basked in how different she was from the other women he'd been with.

Natural, primal, savage but in tune with nature, as if she'd been pulled from another era. Unspoiled by the world, she said very little - indeed, they'd never had a detailed conversation about either of their lives during the time they'd spent together. That was part of what he found so great about her. She knew there was a big wide world out there, and she didn't care. The simple things in life satisfied her. She didn't need all the traveling, excitement and worldliness he had spent his adult years gaining. No complications whatsoever.

He opened his eyes, realizing that he hadn't imagined her scent. Further up the beach, a group of young tribespeople about his age sat in a few circles. The moon wouldn't rise for a few hours, but they already had fires burning beneath iron grates their people probably didn't have the technology to forge themselves. The smell of sea lion mixed in with ozone as the Reventusk youth grilled, chattering about everything and nothing in Zandali as they laughed and relaxed. It was a serene sight, unlike the often serious, focused and supposedly enlightened discussions the people his age preferred to engage in back home. Even the jungle trolls in the Barrens talked so much about politics, adventuring and lore. He'd lived those things; wasn't it time to unwind and stop worrying about what was happening beyond his field of vision?

At the same time, he and Izzy spotted each other. She sat huddled among a group of other young women and a few young men, their light brown fur loincloths and trinkets and jewelry fashioned from bone and sinew all matching as much as their war paint. Most of them were difficult to distinguish from one another even after more than two months there, save the current apple of his eye. She whispered something to her friends while grinning wide, and a few of the other women teased her a bit as she stood up, patting the one next to her on the shoulder.

Ever so slowly, the two of them ambled forward toward each other, her smooth hide barely even tensing up at each step. She was incredible, like a goddess, yet her aura never spoke of anything except humility. By the time they reached each other, she had taken up a mock defensive body language, trying yet failing to stifle her grin as they looked into each other's eyes.

"So..."

"So."

"I did my best to thank you in my own way the other night...but it bears saying out loud," Izzy started, unusually eloquent for the quiet young lady. "Thank you. For everything. Me, the kids, our city. I wouldn't be here if it weren't for you."

He smiled warmly, the winning smile he had won so many over with, and she reacted on cue. A barely visibly tint darkened on her round cheeks, and he fought hard not tours her right there and give them a bite. "You don't have to say anything. It's what I do, and for what it's worth...I couldn't have been luckier to have found you."

Gulping visibly, she tried to steel her nerve and he reveled in the unease he had caused her. She was visibly nervous, because of him. Cheering inside for a conquest well done, he stared at her longingly as she spoke, making her all the more nervous.

"So...I guess you'll be moving on, right?" Izzy asked while intertwining her cute, thick fingers into her bouncy hair. "Adventure calls, right?"

He had her. He knew he did. The winning smile flashed again, and he looked at the sand for a moment while pretending to think it over. "Well, it could leave..." he hummed softly, half expecting her to jump into his arms right there. "Although if there was something to keep me...something special...I just might end up staying." Navarion finally looked up at her then, satisfied that he'd put on his best performance.

Navarion, the ladies man;

Navarion, the heartbreaker;

Navarion, who loves them and leaves them;

Navarion, who beds but never weds;

Navarion, the cocky, smarmy one who was far too aware of how handsome he was and far too absorbed within himself to actually feel the intentions of women, stood there in front of a forest troll villager. A young woman with a lifespan unbelievably shorter than his, a worldview so much more narrow than his, an experience with the world miniscule next to his.

And with one word, she destroyed him.

"Why?"

The waves crashed on the beach as they had since the dawn of time, uninterested in the misunderstandings and intracacies of mortal communication. Her sincerely perplexed look and honest question took a moment to seep in, but eventually the arrogant smirk faded from his face as he realized the light at the end of the tunnel was actually the Deeprun Tram.

"Um…what?"

She twirled one of her dark green locks with her dainty three-fingered hand, waiting for him to answer. Her expression was that of a person who was on the inside of an inside joke. Only he was on the outside and she didn't know it.

"I mean, like, you staying here, what?" Izzy chortled, incredulous and amused that he'd even suggest such a thing. "Yeah, you've had adventures all over the world and have friends everywhere, but you come settle down in a village in the Hinterlands before you're even thirty. Yeah, of course, you'll fit right in here!"

The tenderness in her eyes let him know that she legitimately thought he was joking. There wasn't a hint of mockery or scorn in her demeanor. There didn't need to be. The honesty and truth in her words cut deeper than any razor would.

"Oh…um…of course, right," he stammered with a fake laugh that successfully masked the pain of having been rejected. Ever the actor, he pretended the wound didn't exist rather than tending to it, and played along as it rapidly festered. "I mean, I could never live in a place like this. It's so boring, ha ha!"

She snorted a little laugh and flashed her cute tusks, patting his shoulder like they were old friends. "Hey, to each their own, right? I know you could never stay here, but our home is good enough for us."

"Yeah," was all he could answer, mustering all of his lying ability to force a fake smile.

They lingered for another moment as she took him in for the last time, raking his body with her eyes. "Well, the sex was good, right?" She winked at him suggestively, and for the first time in his life, a pretty lady winking didn't excite him.

"An exciting fling," he fake chuckled as he worried his bright silver eyes would betray his misplaced feeling of attachment. "It was fun while it lasted."

Looking him over for another moment with no inkling that she understood his real intention, she reached out and twirled his long, braided goatee one more time. "Take care of yourself Navarion, alright?"

Severing the painful connection, he fought the urge to run his hand through her mane one more time. "You too."

Without any hesitation or regret, she turned and walked back up the beach to her friends, her cute two-toed feet leaving those distinctive trollish footprints in the sand. A few of the other Raventusk youths waved to him as she joined their beachside campfire, displaying sincere thanks. And then, in the blink of an eye, their focus went back to their own lives and he was forgotten.

Humiliated and embarrassed to be standing alone amongst strangers, he folded his hands into his pockets and turned around, pretending to watch the ocean waves as he walked back toward the main part of the city. The iron lockbox containing his pay clinked as it hung in the backpack over his shoulder, giving him something to focus on as he was overwhelmed by the sheer volume of emotions and memories he tried to repress all at once.

Once he moved from the docks and onto the dirt road lining them, he noticed how filthy his nice suede shoes had become. The undeveloped, third world nature of the city's construction and development - save the docks - no longer seemed rustic; it seemed unsanitary and impoverished. The way the locals walked by without saying a word to him, having already delivered their thanks over then preceding days, didn't make him feel accepted; it made him feel anonymous. The fact that his connection to the cartel had ended didn't make him feel free; it made him feel homeless. The fact that the city council had already expressed their gratitude officially didn't make him feel wanted; it made him feel as if they no longer wanted anything from just another unemployed young man at all.

He watched the locals walk by, flashing around their exposed hides, unpleasant and excessive piercings, primitive war paint and bare feet. These people weren't his roots; they were as foreignt to him as he was to them. He may as well have been a restoration Druid like his brother Zengu wandering Undermine, or a priestess of the moon like his sister Issinia wandering Undercity, he felt so out of place. Or...like a biracial, multicultural kid from a neutral port wandering forgotten through an overgrown forest troll village in the Hinterlands.

"Ow, what the hell," he grumbled as his foot kicked something sharp. Not quite enough to damage his shoes, but he felt it.

Kneeling down to clear a potential danger from the dirt path next to the docks, he saw something...familiar yet not familiar. Next to two unused woven baskets, a dirty scaling knife used to gutting fish or skinning seals stuck up out of the ground. Not wanting anyone else to get hurt, he tossed it aside to one of the many as of yet uncollected piles of refuse that formed rather quickly in a city that only had four children pushing wheelbarrows as their garbage collection. Just as he was about to leave, something shiny and silver caught his eye.

Buried partially in the dirt sat a silver flask. It looked to be rather intricate and for sure was dwarven made, but was obviously a long way from its place of manufacture. After looking around and seeing nobody in the general vicinity, Navarion picked it up and brushed it off; it would be a waste to leave something so nice forgotten in the dirt like the way he felt at that moment.

The flask jiggled as he lifted it up, and he could tell by the sound that the liquid was alcohol. He took a few sips occasionally, but after his first taste of hard liquor at age thirteen - a full decade ago - he had decided to stop. The elves like his mother's people couldn't deal with drugs, tobacco or alcohol as well as other races, and the regeneration of trolls like his father's people caused them to often not know when to quit. Alcohol simply didn't sit well with him, and it was only from curiosity that he opened the flask to sniff it and see if the drink was still good before pouring the poison out.

It was whiskey. Intoxicating even just by smell. He'd never tried it before, but he'd heard about it. It was supposed to burn a bit on the way down. Cheap, strong, awful, the stuff of farmers and villagers.

Yes. It really did taste that awful, he thought. The second sip failed to give him a buzz, but he swigged it around in his mouth, testing the exact flavor. The third sip made him want to sit down, although he was no longer by the docks.

The motion remained, but he was no longer taking a sip of the flask. He could feel it beneath his palm even as it sat tucked in to the pouch on his belt. Another motion involving a tongue ran up his face, and unlike the other incidents, he didn't lash out at Furball for licking him on the face.

"I'm awake, I'm awake," he grumbled, blinking in the darkness of night as he fumbled among the fallen pine cones and tree branches of a wooded area within the confines of the city.

His duskbat nudged him cautiously, trying to help him to his feet. As much as it understood commands in Common, it likely didn't understand his rambling.

"They say they have an inn in this city...it's just a dirt hovel," Navarion murmured while holding his head in his palm and gripping a tree for support to stand. He didn't know what day it was. "Sleeping out here is just as good."

Furball chirped in disagreement, trying to nudge the distraught young man out of the woods. In addition to the general idiocy always plastered across the duskbat's face, there was a measure of concern Navarion hadn't excepted from the dumb animal. It was touching, and he scratched behind Furball's big ears, reveling in the fact that at least somebody was trying to help him get back to his feet.

"Alright, alright," Navarion grumbled once more as Furball crawled behind him and then between his legs, trying to forc percent him to mount up. "We're going."

He didn't know where his mount wanted to take him, or where. Falling in to a combination of trust and apathy, he held on to the reins and slumped over, not even giving an order for a specific destination or trying to elicit from the duskbat where it wanted to go. He fell asleep at one point, saved only by the skill of the mount he often heaped so much scorn upon. Not until he woke up under the heat of the morning sun did he realize that one of the cartel laborers must have instructed Furball to head for Quel'danil.


	15. Realization

The reins were still wrapped around Navarion's hands by the time he woke up. All throughout the night and however much longer, Furball had kept him perfectly balanced and safe while also making record time. It was a series of odd sensations, one after the other.

First, to have fallen asleep while sitting up, only slouching a bit lower but otherwise remaining upright the whole time.

Second, to have the wind whipping across his face when he didn't even have his riding goggles on, yet not rouse him from sleeping for so long. At least he had his riding gloves. He had no idea when he had switched out of clothes and put his armor back on.

Third, to have such a mild hangover even when he remembered drinking for...an indeterminable amout of time before.

He woke up slowly, not forcing himself and marveling at how skilled of a mount Furball truly was. Perhaps he had nearly fallen off while sleeping, or maybe there were a few episodes where he began to slide so much that the duskbat actually had to land, readjust, and the lift off, all without waking him. Not having a form of communication other than jumping around and screeching, Furball would have no way to tell him how the ride had gone so far.

Fortunately, Navarion's travel pack remained securely attached to his baldric. He had a relatively easy time reaching back and fiddling around until he found his flying goggles, taking his time securing them. Once donned, they allowed him to glance below and spy the wide open scenery. They were high, too high, higher than usual, and Furball had a serene look on its face despite having flown for so long. He recognized them as being far beyond Skulk Rock, yet the mount didn't appear tired despite how far they'd flown. It was likely due to gliding; the thermals were powerful enough to carry the duskbat effortlessly, and by transitioning between updrafts and downdrafts, it could pick up tremendous speed over the relatively flat terrain of the Hinterlands.

All around him, Navarion could see the natural beauty once more. Rolling green plains, blue mountains capped in snow and scattered lakes and streams. Herds of wild, untamed horses charged below, moving as one solid, sentient object to Goddess knows where. The most skilled painters on all of Azeroth couldn't have imitated the splendor before him.

And yet he felt empty inside.

Well, not entirely empty. He certainly did blame himself for having behaved so foolishly. For only split seconds did he feel any resentment toward Izzy at all; of that, he could freely admit to himself. She hadn't done anything wrong, and were he in a right state of mind, he wouldn't have wished for anything more, either. They knew nothing about each other, instead having spent their time together racing along the beach, wasting time in shallow conversations in groups by campfires and finding the kinkiest places they could to be alone while he had technically been on duty. She was a nice person as attracted to him as he had been to her, but what they had shared had run its course. For her, he had been an interesting outsider to stop by for a visit before she returned to her normal, everyday life; for him, she had been a means to forcibly forget what he had lost or left behind, or both.

His connection to Izzy severed, he found himself stared in the face by the listlessness he had tried to hard to escape. The first time, he spent his first year as a legal adult riding on goblin ships and serving as his mother had, traveling the world as he tried to recover from the pain of his first failed relationship. He spent a few more years back home after his godmother Irien tracked him down and brought him back, failing to hamper his feeling that he had succeeded, he had run away, seen the world and gone on an adventure. This time was different, though. He'd helped found a guild, something real that was bigger than himself. He'd taken out bandits, cultists, faceless ones, pirates, you name it. When the guild split up as most of them tended to do, he had already been associated with the Argent Crusade for a period of time and simply stayed on. He fought the Scourge, helped to save entire villages and met Rachel. All was well.

Until it wasn't. Hence his latest for way into the world beyand me what he had grown up knowing.

The wind had a strange effect on him, he began to realize. For some people, the rain triggered recollection. For others, it was odor. Navarion enjoyed flying as much as his mother, the riding trainer of Ratchet, enjoyed riding. Trusting Furball once more, he could close his eyes for long periods of time, opening them only to catch occasional glimpses he needed to keep himself grounded.

He had acted so rashly, so foolishly. To think that he could have simply shacked up with a woman who was almost a stranger to him and spent his life there, jobless and directionless...it was beyond stupid. But stupid, poorly considered decisions were nothing new to him.

The hot, damp air contrasted to the crispness he preferred so much. It almost felt humid inside, the whipping in his ears not from the wind in the high skies, but from the steam of the machines. They weren't particularly loud, but they did create quite a bit of visual obfuscation as he tried to prod the bored goblin attendant behind the counter.

"Come on, isn't it done by now?" the lanky biracial teenager whined to the green skinned young lady chewing gum and tracing a turkey with her hand on the back of a flyer advertising a new cardboard factory.

"Honey, I told you already, fifteen minutes for dry cleaning," the goblin lectured him once more, not interested but not losing her patience either. It was as if the young lady managing the laundromat for her parents never grew tired of repeating herself, and talking to her was like talking to a brick wall. "The clock says it's been thirteen minutes anyway, so you don't have long."

Navarion jogged in place as he tried to keep his adrenaline pumping. As soon as the dress was finished, he would need to bolt out into the streets and back up to his family's estate on the bluffs overlooking the port of Ratchet. Nephentha's house party would begin in just an hour, and much like elves, naga meant the times they stated for parties; showing up late the way trolls or humans might was not considered fashionable. Falling into a sort of dance workout routine to the rhythm of the steam press in the back room, he planned his route out in his head, trying to think of ways to arrive home in just five minutes while also avoiding hazards to the dress such as paint shops, fishmongers and that one ogre lady who hawked Limburger cheese at the corner near Jerry's bait shop-

"Here it is!" cooed the suddenly enthusiastic clerk behind the counter, her hand already extended to accept payment. "Five gold." Issinia's dress lay on the counter next to her, washed, pressed, ironed and completely spotless, and in just under the promised fifteen minutes.

Navarion already started fiddling through his pockets for change before his eyes widened. "Five gold? Are you serious? It was a fifteen minute spot removal and press job!"

"On moonweave fabric that requires an enchanted steam press," the clerk snidely remarked while pointing toward a lone glowing contraption among all the normal iron ones in the back. "The actual press itself has a mana pool that has to be refilled. This stuff isn't cheap."

Embarrassment and panic began to rise within the teenager as he frantically searched all of his pockets. He was running out of time if he wanted his sister to...well, have enough time. He had no idea what the hell his sisters and even his godmother always did in the girls' bedroom for an hour or more before parties, but it had something to do with preparation. Why couldn't they just brush their teeth, rinse their hair out and use some facial cleanser like his mother? She looked like a million gold pieces when she went out and it only took her five minutes.

Relenting, Navarion began slapping whatever he had on the counter. The clerk's eyes lit up as two pieces of gold, seventy three pieces of copper, a gnomish pocket clock, a polished piece of tiger's eye and a jade coin bearing the picture of some mogu emperor from eons past collated onto the wooden counter before her.

Not even waiting for her answer, Navarion snatched his middle sister's dress and ran. His pockets were empty save his ID card but at least he had what he needed. Leather shoes pounding on the pavement, he bounded around the steep yellow brick road winding up to the bluffs overlooking Ratchet. He knew the city well enough to know the right turns to make and minimize his time running, even passing by the duplex his parents and godmother lived in for the first few years of his life and we're now renting out to some sort of export operation associated with the night elf officials at Raynewood Retreat in Ashenvale. Before long, he had reached the high stone wall of his family's estate, the Kaldorei style arches at the top of it and the roof of the house contrasting with the Darkspear tiki statues watching guard out front.

Some of the sprite darters his parents raised flicked their tongues at him as he sprinted across the front yard and into the house, kicking his shoes off against the porch steps per family rules. His other siblings were still out on a fishing trip, and nobody was disturbed by his thumping footsteps up the stairs. By the time he began banging on the girls' bedroom door on the second floor, he could already hear Issinia sobbing inside.

"Leave me alone!" the aspiring priestess screamed at him from the other side, clearly distraught that her custom made dress had been ruined by her shortsighted older brother.

After a few seconds to catch his breath, Navarion only had to worry about remorse cracking in his voice, and he had humbled himself enough not to care about that anymore. "Issa, open up!"

"No!"

"Issa, I fixed your dress!"

"You're lying, you're lying so I'll open the door!"

"I swear to Goddess I'm telling the truth," he gasped, holding the dress away from him to avoid sweating on it. "I even gave them my clock so they would finish it on time!"

"No you didn't!" Issinia shouted accusingly, and he heard no indication that she had risen from her bed.

"They have an enchanted steam press at the laundromat-"

"I know what they have there!"

"And they removed the cider stain and dry cleaned it for you!"

"I don't believe you!" Issinia cried, but he could hear her finally rising from her bed. "You don't help people other than yourself!"

"That's - no, that's not true, Issa," he retorted, reeling from comments that hurt a lot more than he liked to admit. "I swore to you, Elune punishes those who bear false witness! Please come out!"

The pitter patter of elven feet approaching, he could hear her stern breathing against the other side of the door. She took her time answering, and he could tell she was conflicted, not entirely believing him but not thinking of her brother as a liar, either. The fact that she wasn't so sure hurt even more.

"You're horrible to us when you make a decision. You never let anybody have their own opinion."

"I was stupid, Issa, and I'm sorry. It was stupid and pigheaded, but that's why I'm trying to make it up to you!" He stopped himself for a moment, not wanting to scare her by breaking down outside her door. "Please...please open the door. I swear, I'm just trying to make things right."

Seconds ticked by, though not quite as fast as his pulse. Swallowing back saliva, he leaned against the wall next to her door to calm himself down, feeling crushed by the guilt of what his bullheaded ego had led him to do. Her refusal to even believe him felt like it hurt, but the reality was that he only hurt himself via his actions. He could have prevented any of this from happening.

Slowly, the door cracked open and too powerfully glowing silver eyes - far more powerful than a normal Kaldorei - shone through at him. Her elven physique contrasted with her trollish facial features, creating an exotic look that was one of the reasons why he always tried his best to keep potentially creepy men of all ages away from her. When she saw that he had told the truth, she let the door slide the rest of the way open, revealing her pajamas donned as if she had prepared to turn in for the night. The Maiev Shadowsong t-shirt actually belonged to their youngest sister, Sharimara, but the youngest sister was even taller than Navarion and had long since outgrown the garment. It was stained with Issinia's tears, and he felt his heart strings pulled tight as he realized that she must have been crying the entire half hour since she'd locked herself in her room.

"I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, Issa," Navarion panted, no longer winded but very angry at himself. "Everything is alright now, see? You have plenty of time to get ready and make it to the party, but you have to start getting ready right now."

As slowly as she'd the door, Issinia stepped forward and wrapped her arms around his neck. Fresh tears flowed, but she didn't weep anymore, sufficient herself by patting him on the back instead. Never one to show much emotion anyway, she only held on briefly before taking the dress in her hand and looking up at him.

"I was wrong. What I said about you, I mean," she panted herself, struggling to keep the feelings inside as initiates of the Sisterhood of Elune were encouraged to do. "I'm sorry."

"Me too."

She lingered for a second, smiling at him despite her tears. "Will you walk me to the party?" Issinia asked. "I don't want any of the dock workers to bother me."

He smiled back, and much of the tension in his throat dissipated. "Of course," he replied, ruffling her indigo hair before the promptly left to fix it and get dressed.

So elated was he when he descended the staircase to wait for her in the kitchen that each step felt as though he were flying. It was comparable to the feeling as Furball landed at Quel'danil Lodge, the flight point attendees and guards appearing rather friendly in contrast to the first time he'd arrived over two months ago.

Few words were shared as he made his way to the main communal longhouse, situated in this elven town in the exact spot it would be in a troll town. There was no time to ruminate on the similarities between his mothers's and father's people, however. He had a very specific purpose for being there before he drifted on. He hadn't realized it at first, given his drunken stupor and the fact that Furball had initiated the trip, but the loyal duskbat had him on track to his ultimate destination. The place where he would apologize, make amends and try to set things right.

But first, he had business there, at that high elf lodge, in the main hall.

Laughter filled the area as he walked up the steps and gave a nod to the guard standing watch outside, leaving his mount at the flight point. Elven voices sounded off in addition to what sounded like a draenei and one a little bit...different. Not deeper, just...louder.

So raucous was the laughter and the chatting that Navarion couldn't quite make out what everybody was saying. The conversation was in Common, his mother tongue, but they were all talking too fast and not enunciating properly and many of the words were unintelligible. Next to a high elf wearing regal robes as if he were the leader of the settlement, Traska sat and nursed a cup of black tea. Both hands were covered in gloves, likely to conceal the missing fingers on her left, and she had a look on her face like someone who had been sad for a long time and had managed to just recently cheer up. Across from her sat the Raventusk scout who had lead the warband to the bandit hideout in the first place. It was an incredible sight, a high elf laughing and joking with a forest troll so casually. A second high elf, a younger female that very well could be a counterpart to the scout sent by the Raventusk, chuckled so heartily that her molar teeth showed.

The elf leader noticed the half elf standing by a series of wooden pillars separating the main hall from the anteroom, and nudged Traska. The draenei female smiled when she saw him, but the sadness was written into it once more. At first, she tried to wave him over to the group, but when he stepped back behind the pillar she seemed to get the message. Excusing herself from the others, she clopped away on her hooves to oblige the need of her friend to be alone.

When she neared, he stepped into a little alcove by the main door, where the guard could see them for safe measure but not hear them due to the curvature of the walls. She followed him over, trying to wipe her expression blank of the wave of emotion rolling in. She failed.

"Thank you for stopping by one last time," Traska said demurely, pushing his extended hand away and hugging him instead of shaking. "I'm sure you have other plans, but it would mean a lot to Jalinde. She will be interred this evening, so it's your last chance to see her."

"I came to see her as much as I did you," he answered, garnering a confused expression from her. "I know we never talked much, but we served alongside each other. You are a valiant heroine, and an excellent healer."

"I try my best," she answered almost demurely, though a part of her seemed to enjoy the flattery.

"Your best was more than good enough. You dealt with a lot of heartbreak over the past few months. I'm no expert, but I can heal a bit. I know what it's like to feel the pressure of having to save others." He closed his eyes for a moment, grateful that he would at least have a break before any more combat again. "Thank you. So much."

"You too," she replied after hesitating for a few seconds. "Come on, now. There isn't much time. The rest of us already paid our respects...she's waiting in the catacombs in the small wood out back."

"Yes...right. It's time." He followed Traska outside, waving to the lodge leader and other revelers in the main hall and they waved back, apparently unaware of the somber moment the draenei and the half elf had just shared.

Outside, the moon still had a while to rise, but most activity had died down at the small settlement. Elven towns were never particularly loud anyway, and the peaceful mood helped Navarion to relax a little knowing what would come next. Traska led him to the wooded area and down the spiral staircase leading to a dug out pit lined in brickwork. A polished iron door opened into the side of the pit, leading to the catacombs beneath. Traska even took him inside, and to his relief he wouldn't be alone; an elven priest quietly sung hymns in one corridor, acknowledging their presence but almost enraptured by whatever scripture he read. The feeling was just right, to not be alone but not observed either. Outside a small room read the ancient elven rune for 'transition' over an open archway, and Traska stopped.

"It's been nice knowing you, Navarion," the draenei priestess sighed. Her disappointment was clear, and in spite of them having spent little time getting to know each other, there was a bond of friendship that now had to be severed.

Better to make it quick, he thought. "You too, Anchorite Traska. Take care of yourself." He gave her another hug, this time using only one arm, before nodding and looking down.

Taking the hint, Traska forced another smile and took her leave, clopping out of the catacombs and probably back to her quarters to cry a bit more. It took quite a bit for Navarion to steel his own nerve as he entered the preparation room and gaze at the white sheet.

The Raventusk had preserved her well. Almost immediately, the scent of perfumes and oils invaded his long nose, and he noticed that the white sheet had been changed from the one Jalinde had been wrapped in back at Raventusk City. She lie on a raised wooden table beneath a crystal providing ethereal light, its power source the type to last at least a century. Embalming tools lie on shelves to one side, along with what appeared to be mortuary manuals written in Thalassian. The air was still and suffocating, a stark contrast to the pleasant odor filling the room.

Sighing heavily, Navarion stepped over to the table and pulled the sheet back, uncovering her face. If rigor mortis had set in, he couldn't tell. Jalinde never wore makeup in the time he had known her, but basic foundation and some eyeshadow had been applied, perhaps to adjust her pallor. Her blonde hair had been washed, shampooed and combed back nicely, and while she didn't smile her face did look almost as serene as Hogar's had. Her head lied on a thick, worn pillow, and were she not in a catacomb one might simply think her asleep.

Her face looked mature. Elegant. Elves didn't really age much, but it was clear that she was far from a youngling. She had never mentioned her exact age, but knowing that high elves could live nearly half a millennia if they took care of themselves and ate right, he guessed that she must have been at least four hundred. A far cry from his mother's age of twelve thousand, but that was different; the lives of night elves had been affected by immortality. In terms of biological ageing, Jalinde Summerdrake didn't appear that far away from Cecilia Hearthglen.

Jalinde's features were typical and nondescript. Her eyes were almond shaped and small, as was her nose. Everyone always spoke of elves having high cheekbones. For people like Navarion and his sister Issinia, who had more trollish features, elven faces looked kind of flat, and their foreheads bulbous. The jaw lines always looked a bit delicate, as did the chins.

Under the ethereal light, Jalinde's pink skin almost shone light purple. Were it not for her hair color, she...almost looked like Navarion's mother.

Cecilia had dedicated her post immortality life to being a mother, leaving her former life as a warrior of the night to raise her children. He wondered if Jalinde had left fighting temporarily during the life of her son. The same delicate chin that didn't look like it belonged to a warrior...so, so similar.

She never cried for anything - his mother. According to his father, Cecilia had cried so few times during her twelve millennia that she could count them on her fingers. She was strong, stoic. Yet Nephentha claimed that Cecilia had cried when Navarion left the last time, three years ago. His ageing, clingy mother cried because of him. He wondered for how long Jalinde had cried when her son was killed in the Second War. If he had been her only child, it must have hurt. So much. His own mother had five other children to cling to and dote on, and she had always viewed them as successful anyway, in contrast to himself. How could a woman so strong, so ancient, so experienced cry for him? The family failure?

Did his mother really love him that much?

Feeling his eyes become salty and hot, Navarion bent over the table and hugged the elf before him, dwarfing her body as he searched for her hand. It felt cold even through the sheet, but he needed something of his own to cling at that moment. His throat felt dry and cried out for the flask on his belt pouch, but he found the willpower to force it to remain silent just a little longer.

"I...knew this time would come. It had to. But now that I find myself here...I don't even know what to say."

Of course, she didn't respond. She couldn't. She was dead. No movement occurred from that still hand; neither a miracle nor a haunting, not even a hallucination. Just silence and one dead elf.

"The people here eulogized you already. Much better than I could. They spent more time with you, they knew you better, they can say better things. I wish I could give you more...but my sorrow is all I have. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."

The light purple skin had its own sort of ethereal glow to it. Soft to the touch, her hair reminded him of lullabies and trips to the Darkmoon Faire. Facial tattoos flickered before his eyes even though the crystal hadn't flickered, and he could feel the residual intoxication in his system as he tried to remember who exactly he was mourning.

"I'm not even someone that important in your life, most likely. You have other people to take care of you. Ones that probably did better by you and who matter more in your heart. Maybe...I'm selfish to be here. I have nothing to offer by sticking around. Just lots of rambling. Rambling from a drunk lout, a homeless drunk lout with nowhere else to go."

He stood back when the last words echoed against the walls, the only sound to be heard. He didn't even know what he was doing there. It felt pointless, to be standing there, and yet he felt compelled to come and say something. Failing to be inspired by the right words, failing to justify his mere presence, he turned to leave, his mind a mess of confusion.

"May you be reunited with your son, Ranger," he murmured in his way out. He felt like an idiot for still talking, for still being there, yet he didn't know what else to do save continue. "I hope he makes you proud...somehow."

Needing to be alone once more, Navarion hurried out of the catacombs and made his way back to the flight point without so much as even acknowledging the presence of other people. Furball picked up on its master's depression, and thankfully remained silent.

He mounted up and flew, knowing what he had to do. If there was one place on Azeroth he could stomach crawling back to, it was Hearthglen. The Argent Crisade fortress. Spurring Furball on, he flew north toward the outpost, desperately trying to reach the last place he could think of where he might find a warm bed open for him. He spent the next night of flying without sleep, practicing his apologies to Rachel in between swigs from the flask that never seemed to run dry.


	16. Self Sabotage

After an afternoon, evening and much of the night spent flying, Navarion finally granted Furball reprieve. His sould already wracked by guilt, it wasn't a hard decision to land once he had spotted a sufficiently secluded cave high in the mountains and secured the mouth via his stasis trap wards. The duskbat had fallen asleep quickly, worn out from riding almost nonstop across the entirety of the Hinterlands and most of the Plaguelands in a twenty four hour period. Furball never complained as he once may have, and its newly subdued demeanor was merely a new source of guilt for the young man.

Huddled against him for extra warmth, the duskbat slept for hours, completely motionless aside from its breathing. Unable to sleep himself, Navarion reveled in the closeness to something living, and even threw the small towel from his travel bag like a blanket over the two of them as they clung together in the back of the cave. The back wall was smooth and round, almost fitting the shape of his back perfectly. Furball was almost as warm as he was, and the towel was comfortable.

Yet Navarion couldn't sleep. He felt tired, but his mind couldn't rest. For those hours, he just tried to wrap his mind around how he had arrived to that point.

The dissolution of his guild had been easy enough. That was normal, natural even. Things like that happened. And his time in the Argent Crusade running its course also felt natural, if regrettable. The difficulty was what came after. He had a job opportunity, and the job came and went. He had helped an impoverished city gain access to international trade and helped them to rid themselves of a band of leeches bleeding them for their natural resources. He should feel fulfilled. But aside from his feelings of having behaved to petulantly, he felt very little.

He could have continued on with the Steamwheedle Cartel, as his parents, family members and so many friends had. Instead, he chose to stay behind in a city to which he had no connection, foolishly thinking he could reside alongside a woman he never truly got to know. His relationship with Izzy had been a fling; nothing more, nothing less. He should have known; in such relations, he was the one who always broke things off, broke his partner's heart and made his intentions for a temporary connection only very clear up front. He should feel happy that he enjoyed what he had going with Izzy while it lasted. But side from his embarrassment at having grown so attached, he felt very little.

He could have stayed on in Hearthglen in the first place, and still be sleeping in Rachel's bed, whispering to her as they were half awake and wondering if the footsteps outside the hall were those of the headmistress checking to make sure no overnight boyfriends had snuck into the women's barracks, tempting them to break the communal vows the Argent Crusade asked of full fledged members. Sure, they had little in common, as he had confessed to Jalinde one night at Raventusk City, but that could have been worked out.

Had he not gone, would things really have turned out differently for the tribespeople and the cartel? Hogar and Jalinde were dead, and nothing would bring them back. There were so many able bodied fighters in the tribe; all they needed were some motivated outsiders to demonstrate to them that they could change and affect their own fate. Wouldn't the others have been enough? Did he even need to waste his time going there?

Questions gave rise to more questions. The jumble of thoughts buzzed around in his head uncomfortably, and he felt dizzy. If anything, the dizziness helped him to relax just a little bit more, and he let his head sink back against the wall of the cave, running his hand over the soft fur coat on Furball's back as the dizziness pulled him down. Thankfully, mercifully, Navarion managed to get an hour of sleep or so before the moon set and the morning sun woke up both rider and mount.

The few more hours between waking up and landing at Hearthglen were almost forgotten entirely. Furball had scavenged for insects while Navarion ate some dried fruit and berries he had carried in his travel bag. No command had to be given other than the fortress' name, and nothing needed to be said as they soared across the dead landscape of the Plaguelands once more. The orange plains hadn't changed, nor had the sickly yellow fungus patches dotting the fields. By the time he had reached the lands of the Crusade and the wildlife became a bit more green, it felt like mere minutes had passed rather than two or so hours.

Being an outsider once more, he landed Furball and left it in the care of a flight point just outside the high fortress walls that catered to non members of the Crusade. Not protesting at another opportunity to rest, Furball settled in among the gryphons and single nether drake tethered outside, leaving Navarion to wander inside and practice what he wanted to say.

There were no trade caravans or returning warbands that day. The fortress had become a quiet and enjoyable place, and the only people passing him by were laborers going a out their business and recruits of nearly all the races of Azeroth and Draenor rotating between their various assignments. Toward the front of the keep, the young man passed a single patch of residential houses where entire fighting families resided or more well off soldiers split houses with roommates. As always, the lame worgen who served as a minuteman near the front walls polished his rifle, his one good leg propped up on a stool as he rocked in his chair. The furry man's eyes lit up at the sight of an old acquaintance, and this time Navarion didn't search for an excuse to escape.

"Welcome to Hearthglen, Hearthglen!" the worgen beamed once more, never seeming to grow tired of the play on names.

"Nice to be welcomed back," Navarion replied, leaning on the railing of the man's front porch. "What did I miss?"

"Oh...nothing much, I suppose." The worgen man considered the question for a moment, giving it serious thought. "We had another contingent return from the Howling Fjord. There's less and less activity up there now."

"As one would expect," Navarion sighed wistfully. The news wasn't particularly interesting, but the small talk unaccompanied by expectations was a passtime he had sorely missed.

"Right. The world has calmed down for the most part. But when the Scourge does strike...well, they strike hard and sudden." The conversation died out for a moment, though neither man felt ready to break it off yet. The worgen continued. "So, you had mentioned you were going way out to the east coast, in the Hinterlands."

In spite of his misgivings over the entire ordeal, Navarion had known the topic would come. "That's right, at Raventusk City. It's a Horde settlement, kind of isolated from most others."

"That's where they were building a port, yes? You mentioned that, though I imagine you weren't directly involved in the construction."

The young man chuckled, lightening up a bit once he could detach himself from the events and describe them as if they were the memories of another person. "That would be correct. They had a problem with bandits pilfering their supplies and their local mine. We ended up taking out an entire camp of them before the new port had been finished."

"Well, good for you, then. It sounds like noble work," the worgen man said sincerely, ceasing his gun polishing for a moment.

"You really think so?" Navarion asked, not suspicious so much as looking for reinforcement.

"Of course. In a lawless region like that, it must be difficult for development to take place. Ports connect the world, even more so than flight points-"

"Dad, brunch is ready!" shouted a little worgen girl from inside the house.

"One minute!" The man appeared irritated for a few seconds before returning to the discussion. "Um...anyway, right. Ports connect the world, and if that place really was under eloped, your efforts probably jump started their path to modernity."

For a moment, Navarion felt warm inside at hearing another person say it. Good deeds should be done for their goodness in and of itself, but the young man appreciated the positive feedback from an outside observer. "Well, I suppose if you look at it-"

"Dad the eggs are getting cold!"

"No yelling in the house!" the worgen barked twice as loudly as his daughter. The little girl's padded feet already bounded toward the front of the house before the disgruntled, disabled father could turn back to his conversation. "It's all about perspective, but any way you look at it, helping a bunch of disadvantaged villagers complete a major infrastructure project is a good thing." The furry little girl grabbed her father after saying hello and began trying to pull him inside the house, and once she was there he relented. "We'll finish up later Hearthglen, for now I have to go eat these eggs."

"Right. I'll see you around," Navarion said, waving even after the man had turned around.

Further down the path, he strolled slowly while going over the words in his head. Even so close to seeing her again, he didn't know how to start or how to finish. The handful of groups of recruits passing by in their steel armor didn't help in terms of focus, and he hung to the side of the road while walking and murmuring to himself.

The middle part of his speech was easiest. He would tell Rachel of how he realized his criticsms of her were mostly a result of him intentionally looking for problems to pick. Her criticisms of him, as he would force himself to admit, were mostly legitimate, which was why he tried to pick at her sometimes. He had been petty and immature, and it wasn't her fault. He'd even suggest they take time away from questing and adventuring to work things out, maybe go on their first vacation together. Anywhere but the Hinterlands, he'd insist.

He wouldn't mention Izzy. Even though he and Rachel had technically broke up and had both been free, there was no benefit to telling her that he had spent time in the arms of another woman, even if that experience helped bring him back to her. Perhaps he could tell her some of the other details of what had happened on the job, if it could help her understand how much soul searching he had done through the pain and loss. Up until he passed by the florist, he tried his best to form the words to tell her exactly how much he'd realized he missed her.

The gnomish botanist noticed the half elf, half troll visitor eyeing her stock. "You looking at the roses, sir?" she asked.

"Yeah...they look fresh and new," he replied, sniffing them and running a finger along one of the silky folds. "How much?"

"The climate here isn't conducive to growing them. I usually charge an entire gold piece per stalk; once an entire bouquet goes, it will take me a while before another one will be ready." She eyed his coin purse while reaching for only one stalk, the hope obvious in her eyes.

"Well, be prepared to start growing again quickly. I'll need that whole bouquet." His money had already been passed across the counter of her stall before she had gleefully pulled out a sheet of red paper. "Yeah, these smell real nice."

"Only the best, sir," she chirped. She probably used that line on every customer, but her tiny voice made it sound especially pleasant, and much of the tension left his shoulders.

Once she had finished wrapping the stalks, he took a moment to mat down his Mohawk against his head and neck, leaving his mane to lay loose over his shoulders the way she preferred it. Away from his father's people, simpler, less flashy hairstyles were preferred.

After only one turn on the narrow road, the women's barracks had already come into view. Two female recruits chatted on the front law while rinsing the inside of their armor with a combination of water and vinegar, ignoring the few people who walked by. Navarion was included, and he passed on by before anybody could interrogate the visitor as to why he wanted to enter the women's quarters. Inside, the barracks were as dark and musty as ever, providing a solemn environment as he strode down the long hall of the first floor toward the staircase straight back.

It felt strange, their relationship. He could recall the good times they'd had together, arguing about politics around campfires while campaigning against the latest hollow undead outbreaks and sparring alone at the drill yard when everye else had gone to sleep. Their relationship was one based specifically on not discussing it, or each other, and simply enjoying life together instead. He could not recall how exactly they'd met, or how he'd felt the first time they'd spoken, or how long they'd actually known each other. But he remembered her temperament. He remembered how well he could read her, predict her behavior, and how aware he was of exactly when and how he angered her each time during the slow burn of their disintegrating romance. If only he had been a little more adult in the way he dealt with her, perhaps things would have been different.

But should they have been? Their time apart had taught him many things, chief among them how much he wanted her back. Maybe their bond would even grow stronger having spent time apart. Maybe she missed him just as much as he'd missed her, and hadn't realized it until the end, just as it had taken him the entire time to realize it.

On the second floor of the barracks, he found himself standing before her room. Although it wasn't even noon yet, there was no light escaping from the crack at the bottom of the door and he heard no snoring from inside. Heart fluttering, he decided to give up on planning out exactly what he would say. Much better, he thought, to talk from the heart, and not let himself feel embarrassed at what he might say, even if he humbled himself before her. Taking one last deep breath, he gripped the bouquet and knocked on the door.

When it slid open, he felt worried. She never left it unlocked, even during the day, even if she was inside with guests. Visitors like him were only allowed inside the fortress if they were known; theft was unheard of.

Anxiety rising, Navarion stepped forward and nudged the door open a little more. Darkness filled the room, but his silver Kaldorei eyes allowed him to see perfectly, perhaps even better, in the dark. When Rachel had been living there, the tiny one-room apartment had been full to the hilt with furniture, hoarding being one of her vices. Yet the room he saw before him sat so empty that his footsteps actually echoed. Dust motes glistened in the air of the uninhabited room, and the place looked like it had been abandoned for years. Rachel had never hinted that she would be transferring to another room...it didn't make sense.

The door opening across the hall sent him backing out, though he hung back just enough to remain partially concealed behind the wall. Self consciousness compelled him to keep the bouquet hidden from others. Once he trained his gaze on the door across the hall, a demure dwarven recruit stepped out halfway in the same manner he had, wearing cheap cotton shirt and pants that were typical for recruits on their off days. She looked at him for a moment as if asking him to ask questions before she gave answers, and his curiosity made him happy to oblige.

"Good morning, sister...how are you doing today?"

She continued looking at him hesitantly, almost shy to respond. "Fine," was her only answer.

He had a feeling this would be like pulling teeth, and tried to just get to the point if she wasn't in the mood for pleasant tries. "Sister, did you know Rachel? The tall young lady who lived in this apartment?"

"Yes, I know her. She doesn't live here anymore." The dwarf's demeanor was strange; many recruits in the Aegent Crusade preferred visitors not to enter due to potential distractions, but this woman was just weird.

"Did she transfer to another room? Or did they stick her in one of the communal houses out front?" Navarion asked, fighting hard to ignore the voice in the back of his mind.

The dwarf already seemed to have expected him there, hesitating due to discomfort rather than not knowing the answers. "Rachel was honorably discharged a few weeks ago. She went back to Goldshire."

"Ah. I see," he hummed congenially, forcing his best fake smile while nodding and looking at his shoes. "So she had enough of all the conflict and uncertainty, then?"

"She just got married."

For a few seconds, his heart stopped beating. Not figuratively either, but an actual heart palpitation despite Navarion being only twenty three years old and in good health. His lungs remained motionless for the duration, pumping again only when his shocked heart did.

"I...beg your pardon?"

"Her parents offered her an arranged marriage maybe two months ago. Some family friend, apparently. A big lumberjack in Ellwynd. She accepted, requested te be discharged and left just a week before the wedding."

Navarion tightened his jaw, forcing his lips to remain still as heat rose in his cheeks. "I see."

"She always had difficulty fitting in, and if you know her, you know her hang ups about her height," the dwarf woman explained, gaining a bit of confidence when Navarion kept a lid on his emotions. "Apparently, this fella her parents found is even bigger than her, and someone known te her, so it's a fine match in more ways than one."

"She didn't have anybody here?" the spurned young man asked, remembering how much of a secret they had kept their relationship.

"No, not that I know of. I spoke te her a wee bit before she left. I didn't know her so well, but I asked why she'd want te leave the Crusade. She mentioned something about not having anything here te keep her behind."

There was no sudden surge of pain. No sharp jab at his ego, no shattering of his psyche, nothing. Just an empty numbness left in the wake of loss.

"I see...right. Well, thank you very much for the news sister." He almost walked out before realizing he was still hiding the bouquet in his hand.

Taking the hint, she nodded wordlessly and returned to her room, leaving him to slink out and skulk down the hallway.

Navarion's head rang as he slumped against the wooden cottage. He didn't quite know how he'd gotten there, but the stone outer wall just a few feet in front of him reassured him that he hadn't actually left the fortress. The moon had risen and most activity had died out, giving rise to a horrible silence that cursed him to sit with his own thoughts. Even the whiskey was't quite doing the trick.

Bouquet in had, he revisited every step of every mistake he'd made over the past half a year. There were a hundred and one ways he could think of where he should have done things differently, used different words or simply been kinder to her. Every single one of them materialized as a barb poking into his soul, mocking him once again for chasing after things he should have known he wouldn't have.

A tight knot formed in his throat, straining every muscle from the chin up as he fought to keep it down, breathe only through his nose and stuff everything down.

He and Rachel had been together. They had broken up almost three months prior. They already weren't together anymore. That was a fact.

The knot slid from his throat into his chest, applying pressure onto his heart and constricting his pulse.

If they had already broken up, he shouldn't be in this much pain. She wasn't his anymore. She hadn't been for a long time. He'd left on his own accord, shacked up in a temporary fling with another woman he didn't really care for, and had plenty of time to actually get over the overgrown human. The lie was so palatable that the pain almost turned to pleasure.

The knot collapsed, shooting from his chest into the pit of his stomach. That part hurt literally, physically.

In fact...he was glad it happened. Forcing his mind to focus on every single argument they'd had, he searched for reasons to pick at her. Even in her absence, he found things he absolutely couldn't stand about Rachel. The sound of her laugh whenever her nose was stuffy, her tendency to snore lightly, the way she enjoyed eating the crust of sliced bread. There had been reasons they argued so much toward the end, he tried to convince himself.

His heart beat so quickly in anger that the pain in his stomach melted away, turning to ash under the heat of his resentment.

He was not sad. He didn't care about Rachel. He never cared about Izzy. He never cared about women at all. Taking another of many long gulps from the flask of whiskey, he tried to tell himself that he had never been interested in any of his relationships beyond the thrill of being with a new person. He hadn't been dumped, he forced himself to think, because he never committed to women anyway. All trysts were temporary. He repeated the lie until it became truth, numbing the manchild's broken heart.

The heat of his heart burned out, leaving cooled embers. Letting it freeze over, his chest turned to ice, cold and unfeeling. Just how he wanted to be. Just how he felt he could protect his fragile, bruised ego.

He didn't know how long he passed out for after the last sip, but it wasn't long. Groggy and half awake, he felt Furball surreptitiously take the flask from him in its mouth and waddle away with it, hiding it where he couldn't see; a rare occurrence of smart thinking from the giant winged cotton ball. In the morning, he could be mad, he could curse, he could waste a few minutes trying to find his medicine. But until then, the drunk young man had a boat to catch, and friends to apologize to.


	17. To Relent

The weather was calm enough at the Barrens oasis that the water on the surface of the small spring didn't even ripple. The dense thickets and palm trees shielded Navarion and Khujand from prying eyes on the outside looking in, giving them plenty of time to finish picking as many peaceblooms as they could carry.

Taking great care, Khujand inspected each patch before plucking any of the pretty flowers out of the soil. So abundantly did the flowers grow in the region that the family actually had the ability to pick and choose. They were the cheapest herb out there and the fastest growing, one of the many reasons why they didn't bother growing any back at their estate. Navarion watched his father's massive three fingered hand felt the texture of a smaller flower so carefully. It was strange to see those big hands displaying such gentleness. He knew firsthand the power they held.

The silence that ensued as he and his father picked the peaceblooms felt suffocating. Aside from the deep rumble of Khujand's lungs, there were only natural sounds to be heard. Only the wind whipping in between the palm trees provided any form of ambient noise as they worked. Tension mounted within Navarion that went unnoticed by his father, only serving to irritate the teenager even more. He felt like he had become a man back then, and hence was entitled to speak his mind about a few things.

But as they worked their path of picking all the way to the shore, he chose an inopportune time and way to speak it.

"You never hit anyone else, dad!" Navarion piped up in a less commanding voice than he had intended.

His big troll of a dad only turned around halfway to listen to him, shooting him a confused expression. "Washyu sayin', boy?" Khujand asked, not quite getting the point.

"You never hit my brothers and sisters," he elaborated, trying to make himself clear in light of his already shot nerves. Just the thought of brining the topic enough caused his arms to shake. "But you used to hit me."

His father gave him a look like he was listening, but didn't think it important. "Ya got inta worse trouble than they did, son," was all his father replied with. That his father just continued picking more flowers only bothered him more.

"But they still got into trouble too! You never hit any of them at all, not even Shari, and she did stuff just as bad as me. But you never hit any of them." His pulse raced in indignation as the resentment he'd stuffed away for years came spilling out.

"Yeah, I hit ya, son. And my daddy hit me. And his daddy hit him. And on it goes all the way back ta tha Gurubashi." His father straightened up a bit and patted him on the head, an attempt at consoling that actually made him even more upset. "But I don't hit ya now, so don't dwell on it."

"You don't understand," he muttered, feeling the burn in this throat as his attempt to express himself felt denied.

For a second, Khujand turned around as if he wanted to say something. Navarion felt his heart wrenched as his intuition pressed him to listen for his father to solve everything and his hormones told him to rebelliously interrupt the middle aged, pureblooded jungle troll before he could even speak. He loved his father so much, yet wished he didn't love him at the same time. The confusion was maddening, smothering, oppressive, and his brain screeched inside for his father to just open his mouth and say what he needed to say.

But he didn't. After a moment of reflection, Khujand turned away quickly and began examining the peaceblooms just a little too closely, and for a little too long.

Frozen in place, Navarion didn't know what to do. He had just blurted out much of what he felt. It came out in an inarticulate and tactless way, but even if he tried to rephrase it to sound more eloquent, he would ultimately be rehashing the same thoughts out loud. He felt like an idiot once more, standing there holding a basket full of flowers, unmoving while his father's pace of work became even less than that of a snail. Almost feeling too embarrassed to just start working again after having tried to open the subject, Navarion gave it one more try before giving up.

"Dad, you don't even under-"

"I heard ya the first time, son," his father sighed in a low, almost sad voice.

His work paused and the big blue man stayed still, kneeling over a patch of peaceblooms. Navarion stood next to him, once more pushed into a painful silence as he wondered what his father would say. When his father said nothing, frustration set in as the soles of his feet almost felt hot from the lack of position change.

Slowly, Khujand slid over to a rock large enough for him to sit on, facing in the opposite direction. Navarion's father was acting weird, in a way he wasn't used to seeing, and he didn't like it. Khujand clearly wasn't actually thinking about the peaceblooms, yet he practically forced himself to stare at them, acting like Navarion wasn't even there. It was as if his father, who always seemed to know what to say in order to defuse tension, found himself at a loss for words. And that, more than anything, made Navarion uncomfortable.

"Dad...?"

Hunched over, Khujand rested his forehead on one of his palms, keeping up the facade of staring into the flower patch. Statuesque, silent and maybe even a little sad, the weathered shadow hunter lost all of his warm confidence, to the point where he almost seemed awkward.

Using his free hand, Khujand reached out and took Navarion's. At first the son tried to pull away, feeling that having to hold his father's hand meant he was being treated like a child.

"Son...come sit down," Khujand asked, pulling Navarion to another rock that jutted up out of the flower patch across from him.

Swallowing his teenage pride, Navarion did as he was asked. Perhaps if he endured the silliness of having his father tell him to sit and hold his hand, he could at least gain some form of response to the issue burning in his mind.

Deep breaths were normal for his father, but this time the man sounded a little off. Thankfully, he let go of Navarion's hand and sat up, his face morose and downcast. It was the first time he'd ever seen his father in such a state, and suddenly the young man regretted having opened the topic at all. Had he known his father would become almost a different person - in a low key manner but surprising nonetheless - he wouldn't have brought it up.

Khujand outstretched his arm, tracing a line on his azure hide. "Ya used ta fit right here, ya know," he hummed, a hint of sadness in his voice. "Ya tha same person but ya were once so small. I could cup tha back of ya big noggin in my palm, and ya feet wouldn't even reach back ta tha crook of my arm." Mixed in to the sadness was an almost melancholy admiration, but his father seemed truly focused on his arm - or something he was seeing there - rather than the teenager sitting on the opposite rock. "I used ta hold ya when ya were sleepin' sometimes, instead of puttin' ya back in tha crib. After a while, I could even balance ya on my forearm, sway ya back and forth a little bit and not worry about droppin' ya. Always over ya bed or a soft cushion, of course."

In a way, Khujand was rambling, and yet he appeared entirely lucid and cognizant of what he was talking about. At times like those, Navarion used to just roll his eyes and tune his fuddy duddy father out, counting magical gold coins in his head or wondering where he would go for dinner with his friends that night, spending real coins that...he had just bummed from his father. Yet this time, Navarion's attention was held by the combination of frustration, resentment, self pity and a burning contradictory desire for his father to just make things right, and be found himself inexplicably listening when he would otherwise have failed to pay attention.

"I used ta hold ya, and tell Cici what an opportunity this was...ya and Thanil...ta put things right. Cause ya granddaddy, may he rest in peace, did his best. He tried so hard. But everybody is a prisoner ta their experiences. And when I acted up, he used ta beat tha hell out of me. He came from a different time, ya know. Just, straight up different time." Khujand stopped looking at his own forearm and rested his chin on his lightly balled fist, staring at the water of the oasis and still failing to look directly at Navarion. "Ya great grandaddy...well, we don't talk about this much, but he was a bad person. An evil person. And ya grandaddy swore he would break the cycle, and do better. And, son, he really did. Even if he hit me sometimes, he wasn't like his own daddy."

Inhaling deeply after the monologue, Khujand shifted and Navarion jumped a little. The man before him had taken care of him, had sacrificed to do so. And yet he had also hit him, belted him, smacked him in the back of the head simply for using bad words or insulting people and not actually hitting them. He never just put soap in Navarion's mouth like his godmother Irien did or forced him to do demanding labor in the yard the way his mother, Cecilia, did. Anger fought hard inside of Navarion, telling him to stand up, walk away and go home, or at the very minimum think about something else. But another voice inside, something a bit deeper, wouldn't let him do that.

"And ya grandaddy told me tha same thing, even comin' from a different time like he did. And I could almost hear his voice on those nights, when I would hold ya like so..." Khujand stretched his arm out again, looking at his own forearm once more. "And I would tell Cici, I'm gonna do this different. If other people wanna spank their kids, that's their business. I don't judge and I don't care. But that ain't how I'm gonna do it. That's what I used ta say. And I. Eh. I broke my promise, son. I'm sorry. If ya're hopin' for some kinda big revelation where I explain it all away, or give ya some sort of justification for why I did, then I can't. There ain't no excuse for it, other than bad parentin' on my part."

"You weren't a bad dad," Navarion sighed, feeling both disappointed and - in some way - a little bit more understanding.

"Well, I'm a dad who broke his promise. That much can be said. I set out ta raise ya in a better way than how I was raised. And if I could go back and do things that way, ya know I would. But I can't change tha past."

"I know," Navarion sighed once more, his head filled with the lightheaded feeling he'd often get on the few occasions when he and his father had serious talks alone.

His heart jumped between lingering resentment over having been the only child to get smacked when picking on other children or stealing candy, and the raw feeling he couldn't quite label that formed in reaction to his father's obvious guilt. The two of them sat there for a long time, both staring at the peaceblooms as a sort of frankness settled in between them. Never could he remember seeing his father look so...well, sad, not since their family friend Kuma, one of their old contacts from the Cenarion Circle, had passed away.

Khujand sat up and looked Navarion right in the eye. Despite of the rough treatment he'd received from his father growing up, the look in those glowing red eyes spoke of a sense of shame that the rebellious teenager found it difficult not to accept.

"One day, ya gonna have kids of ya own, son...and I know ya gonna do a good job. I may not be around anymore by tha time ya do, but whether I am or not...please promise me that ya're gonna do a better job than I did."

"Your job was fine, dad," Navarion mumbled, frustrated that his anger had dissipated, leaving a sense of closeness to his father that made him uneasy.

"Then make sure ya job is great," his father replied, chuckling a bit in spite of his low mood. "Please don't hishya kids son, even if they give ya lip."

"I won't, dad. I promise."

The two of them smiled at one another sadly, the older man feeling the at least partial acceptance of his apology and the younger man feeling the depth to his father he hadn't been aware of before. They continued to sit for a long time, both of them enjoying the serenity of the scene as they calmed down. The sappy feeling of having actually shared a tender moment with his father no longer made Navarion's hide crawl, at least when there weren't others to observe, and even though it might embarrass his father to hear it, the teenager almost felt like he could forgive the man. Maybe he would tell him that one day, but at that moment, they were both content to watch the wind push ripples across the surface of the oasis water.

"I hope you're able to see my kids whenever I do have some," Navarion murmured sheepishly, surprising himself by how mushy his own words were. Not in a hundred years would he imagine himself being the one to say that.

Out of his father's throat rang a noise that couldn't be called high pitched, but was higher than the middle aged jungle troll's normal rumbling baritone. The half night elf, half jungle troll son almost felt shy to glance at the expression on his father's face, but he knew that the words had affected them both a great deal. Once he sounded like he'd recovered from the effect, Khujand reached out and patted Navarion on the shoulder. For the first time in the teenager's life, he didn't feel like he wanted to lean away.

"I hope ya mama and me live long enough ta see them, too."

Many decades ago, Southshore had been a mostly human port city considered territory of the Alliance. Even after the First, Second and Third Wars, it remained an important foothold for the faction in Lordaeron and allowed the shipping of goods and troops in and out of the continent. At some point, a great Cataclysm occurred - nowhere near as catastrophic as the Sundering according to his mother, but still a shock to the world - and the Forsaken, who were still members of the Horde at that time, capitalized. They razed the city to the ground and massacred its inhabitants, just as the Alliance did to Horde towns as well, and so on and so forth in the back and forth revenge attacks.

All of that factional conflict was in the past. The worst of it had occurred before Navarion had even been born, and his parents and godmother inundated him with stories about how unfriendly the world had been at one time.

Not to say Southshore had returned to the peaceful place it once was. Over the years, the Forsaken moved in and began reclaiming the devastated city, building up their creepy haunted buildings bearing the distinctive, frightening architecture. Then, one by one, they began to exhume bodies and reanimate the residents they had killed. Viewed as abominations by their former faction, the undead inhabitants had no choice but to join the Forsaken, the people who had killed them in the first place, seeing as how the Alliance would hunt them down.

Life went on in a similar manner to how it had once been described, but with an undead twist. A large number of the residents were hollow but docile, watering dead grass using empty flower pots and moving the same piles of rotten firewood back and forth between two spots endlessly. Those undead who had retained their mental faculties seemed to ignore it and go about their business in the way only a population of calculating, sleepless immortals could. The only true immortals left, technically. As Navarion landed Furball at the front of the fortified and guarded city, he wondered what undead people like his family friend Valmar planned on doing given all the time they would have.

It was already midday by the time the young man and his duskbat landed, although it was difficult to tell due to the blight hanging in the air; the clouds in the sky were a dark, rusty red hue that made the entire place depressing. Two of the five deathguards standing by the main gate approached him casually. The almost total lack of fear the Forsaken displayed toward even the most intimidating of opponents was, in and of itself, rather intimidating and Navarion found himself quickly wishing more of the undead could be like Valmar - cultured, optimistic, almost outgoing in a quiet sort of way.

The two sullen deathguards took a moment to inspect his belongings visually. "Steamwheedle?" the first asked in a creepy, hollow tone.

"Yes, officer," the young man replied while showing the ID card back from Ratchet. It was weathered after a few years worth of adventures, but had saved him from being strip searched at a number of checkpoints before. "I'm here for the voyage leaving today."

Not quite animated but almost friendly, the second deathguard leaned closer at the comment. "Your ship leaves very soon. You need to get going now." At that, the first guard waved for the others to step aside, and Navarion led the oddly comfortable Furball into New Southshore.

Once inside, Navarion found himself at a loss as to where to go or what to do. He had no ticket for the ship and didn't even know if there would be members of the Forsaken traveling; if so, that would mean the possibility of all rooms and bunks being booked. Trying to ignore whatever Furball was bouncing around about, he stood up straight and searched for any sign of Vegnus or Nephentha. They would both stick out like sore thumbs and would, in theory be able to get him on the ship. If they were still willing.

Navarion pushed the apprehension out of his mind just as he pushed aside a gawking nerubian. Why on Azeroth the Forsaken allowed the subterranean spider people back into their ranks was beyond him, but their mandibles and all their eyes were just so disturbing to look at that dealing with them was just difficult; political correctness be damned. At least the abomination that offered him discount bars of disinfectant soap for half off at a hawker stall had a regular, if deformed, mouth, nose and pair of eyes. The gargoyles perched on the rooftops bothered Navarion in particular for less obvious reasons to anyone other than him and Furball (who wouldn't stop nibbling at his armor to get his attention). They weren't in stone form but weren't mingling either, simply watching over everyone and occasionally chirping at each other. For sure they were either normal residents or guards of some sort, but after his incident almost three months ago the young man found it difficult to relax around them.

"What?!" Navarion grumbled when Furball actually ran in front of him and stopped, nearly tripping him.

Bobbing its head up and down, the dumb duskbat tried to nod toward the dead trees just inside the iron city walls between the empty, exhumed graveyard and an empty, festering well.

Like a black dot in the sky, a flying creature swooped around in circles. At first, the shape was difficult to make out due to the way the blight around the settlement; the rust clouds were interspersed with odd dark brown swirls in the sky, and at times the swooping creature almost seemed to disappear. Far too fast to be a gargoyle, the creature danced around across the sky aimlessly, never stopping and never actually remaining in one general direction for a long time. It was as if it were hollow or crazed, yet its movements were neither violent nor enraged. There was an almost morbid beauty to the way the creature sketched lines across the blight in the air, weaving in and out as it gradually descended and approached the trees. What appeared to be a carrion bird bore a fur coat rather than a feathery down, and eventually two comically large concave ears came into view. The creature's dance in the sky resembled a song in its beauty, like the ballet his sisters had once taken him to watch. Finished in its enchanting movements, the creature settled into the trees, hanging upside down in a branch as it watched the two of them, ignored everybody else in the passing crowd on the long main road of New Southshore and was, in turn, ignored by all save the half elf, half troll man and his duskbat.

A moron's grin greeted them both, every bit as irritatingly goofy as Furball's. Perhaps an effect associated with his voodoo, Navarion could sense that the giant bat was female. And yet bats were not native to Hillsbrad...its presence didn't make sense.

In complete awe, Furball stared right back at the female duskbat, mouth gaping open and tongue hanging out over bottom lip. A twinkle shone in its bug eyes, and its body tensed up as if it wanted to leap and soar but knew it didn't have permission to do so. The female bat remained perched in the tree, perhaps too afraid or wild to enter the city proper but not wanting to leave.

So enraptured was Furball that it didn't even notice when Navarion removed its riding tack and took off the saddle and associated bags. In a form of sympathy for the mount who had remained loyal and steadfast throughout all the abuse he had hurled its way for upwards of a year, Navarion petted the pet one last time and nudged it forward, garnering an innocently pleading look.

"Go on," he hummed, nodding to Furball in approval. "At least one of us can get lucky at the end of all this."

Furball's eyes became glassy as if the duskbat wanted to cry. It looked to the female, then to its master, then to its female, and then to the man it realized was no longer its master. Rearing back on its squat hind legs, Furball leaned forward onto Navarion's chest and gave him what appeared to be a hug by wrapping its leathery hand-wings around his shoulders. Awkward at first, he eventually got the idea and hugged back, patting Furball's furry back one last time.

"You're the best mount I've ever had," he whispered to the emotional animal as it let go and continued to look at him for a moment. "Go on now. Don't make me change my mind."

One cheerful screech later and Furball bounded off the main road and into the air. As if anticipating the move, the female let go and dropped off from the branch, looping up in the air to soar side by side with the former mount. A free bat, Furball twirled I. Circles in the air, soaring higher and higher as it competed with its newfound companion. Navarion stood and watched until the two of them soared out of sight, perhaps back to Tirisfal where their species originated from. As much as he detested to admit it, the young man felt sad to see the duskbat go, but he knew it was the fairest decision to make.

He only had a few seconds to internally let go before his previous apprehensions about missing the boat were alleviated. They were, of course, replaced by brand new apprehensions about how he would explain himself.

"Took ye long enough," sounded off Vegnus' non gruff voice from behind.

Standing a little up the road and shoving away two similarly sized ghoul's trying to offer him free but suspicious looking black licorice, Vegnus stood and stared up at Navarion. The short man had no travel bags with him and had changed out of his uniform. The look on his face was one of begrudging approval, and he appeared to be in a much better mood than when they had last seen each other a week before.

"I arrived in time, right?" Navarion asked innocently, not in the mood for his typical brash defiance.

Giving the annoying ghoul's another good shove, Vegnus thankfully lost his patience for a debate and pointed toward a decrepit old wagon behind him. The two horses were rotten undead and the driver was a paraplegic man whose remaining parts looked surprisingly healthy; were it not for the fact that he was nailed down to the driver's seat at the front of the open flatbed wagon he might not even have been that creepy.

"Nepha is already watching our bags with two crew members at the docks. This fella is our ride. Hop on."

Glad to oblige, Navarion picked up his banks and thanked Vegnus profusely as he climbed aboard, able to humble himself as long as the dwarf didn't rub his nose in it. The two of them sat alone in the back, saying nothing as the legless driver spurred on the undead horses. They moved at a relatively fast rate, even the hollow undead rapidly moving out of the way without complaint. Black wood and broken windows of nonetheless booming shops whizzed by as the two men sat in uncomfortable silence. Facing back toward the main gate, there was no way to tell how close or far they were from the docks.

"I'm glad to be going with you guys instead of alone," Navarion stated openly, seeing no reason for their ride to remain uncomfortable.

Vegnus continued to stare into the crowds for a moment before turning to him. He opened his mouth twice before furrowing his brow, not at all the short man who always spoke his mind. He settled back into his seat, apparently having decided against scolding the young man a little. "Ye came back. That's all that matters."

"I was wasting my time trying to be anywhere else." The light headed feeling returned to the spot between Navarion's eyes as he felt surprised by his own words, and by the ease with which he said them.

Surprised as well, Vegnus softened and experienced less difficulty in speaking that time. "I'm glad yer coming with us too, and that ye didn't leave us hanging. Raventusk was my last contract with the cartel."

Eyes as wide as Furball's, Navarion turned to face the short man slowly, his surprise at Vegnus' statement much more than his surprise at his own had been. "You retired?" he asked, almost upset.

"I felt it's time," Vegnus replied, relaxing a bit as they talked cordially. "I've given the cartel a few good decades. I've earned me keep."

Agreeing and finding nothing else to say, Navarion merely nodded and sighed, leaning back. It would be awful difficult to imagine the man who had been like an uncle to him no longer working with the cartel that their entire circle of family friends had been involved in, one way or another. There would be plenty of time for discussion during the voyage back to Ratchet, though. After a week of drunken drifting and sleeping outdoors, Navarion just wanted to sink back into the wagon bed and listen to the rhythmic creaking of the axles until they reached their ship.

And so the two of them sat on the rickety wagon as the cabby drove the to the new and improved Southshore docks. An eight-foot-tall half-elf/half-troll and a four-foot-tall Wildhammer dwarf with a not clearly delineated family-friend relationship stared straight ahead, both of them deep in thought again. More from boredom rather than curiosity, Navarion spoke again when he realized that the docks were much further away than he had expected.

"So, eh, Vegnus…" he started, speaking without a real purpose in mind. "What'll you be doing now that your contract with Steamwheedle is finished?"

Continuing to stare as if he were deep in thought, Vegnus cleared his throat absentmindedly before answering. "Well, I'm fifty-six years old now, laddie," Vegnus answered with a tone that suddenly became thoughtful toward the end. "I've worked hard for many years te have the rest of me life in front of me. I think it's time I return te Dun Morogh, buy meself some land and find a wife."

Snorting a laugh at the thought, Navarion reacted the way he would had one of his guildies made the same plans, forgetting that the man seated next to him was his father's age. "You traveled the world for decades and now you want to spend perhaps another two centuries just farming? That's lame."

The novice shadow hunter's bright silver eyes had already grown wide at his own ignorant statement before Vegnus even had time to react. With a slow escalation, Navarion could feel the indignance rising from the offended dwarf. They looked at each other finally with a hurt and righteous darkness on Vegnus' still youthful face.

"Te each his own, youngblood," Vegnus scolded quietly. He was literally half Navarion's size and a mere civilian unable to threaten anyone physically, but it was the dwarf's sharp tongue and outspoken nature that intimidated the much larger companion. "Maybe it isn't interesting te ye, but it is te me. And that's why I'm choosing te go settle down and start a family. Ye don't like it, don't do it, and don't knock it. Not everyody else takes such an enviable situation for granted as ye do."

The personal jab stoked Navarion's testosterone just enough for him to grant a response somewhere between meek and defiant. "Take what for granted? I worked hard out here to find myself, just like you did! I said I'm coming back to Ratchet, what more do you want?"

Vegnus shook his head, completely unafraid of the young man next to him. "Ye still don't get it, do ye?" he asked with some legitimate condescension.

"Get what?" Navarion asked with a bit more indignance of his own.

The answer was swift, and the words Vegnus had bit back on earlier finally came out. "Me ma died when I was young. Me pa was distraught and unprepared te raise me on his own and sent me off with his sister. Her husband was handicapped and we all had a tough life. I wasn't finding myself, ye ingrate; I was financially supporting me father, aunt and uncle in their old age and me two cousins te study at an engineering college. If I had what ye have, I wouldn't have done any of that."

"What do you mean what I have?" the troll-elf asked again, both offended and intrigued. His ego still led him to fall for anyone speaking about him, even after being so bruised over the past week.

Vegnus bristled at the mere question. "What are ye, ignorant? Ye born te a family that waited till they had their life in order before birthing ye and ye siblings. Ye grew up first in a brand new house during the construction boom in Ratchet and then on a three-floor villa - a bloody three-floor estate with ye own private garden - at a time when most of the world's population is still illiterate. Ye got two parents that love ye te death and secured an environment where ye wouldn't suffer what they did...I mean, for God's sake ye idiot, yer ma is a night elf and yer pa is a troll! Do ye have any idea the kind of racism they faced just te be tegether? Even just twenty years ago, Azeroth was a different place. Factions were still an issue. People used te give ol' Cici and Khuj dirty looks just fer holding hands in public, and they worked hard te protect ye and yer siblings from all that.

"So ye run out here, run away from yer family all because ye want te prove something, forgetting the whole time how attached they are te one another because ye parents…for God's sake kid, yer pa is short-lived and yer ma is from a generation where a good lot of them already just kicked the bucket from old age. Ye got Cici's blood in ye and yer going te live for at least a few centuries, maybe a little more. What the hell are ye doing out here when they're all waiting for ye back there?"

"Maybe I was-" Navarion shouted at first but then stopped himself, not wanting to show disrespect. "Maybe I really was finding all this out! Maybe running away is what helped me to already start to see what you're telling me now! Get real, if you told me any of this a few years ago, would I have listened to you beyond the first sentence?"

Vegnus eyed him for a moment, still upset but also reasonable. "No. Ye wouldn't have."

The wagon rolled to a stop in front of what had to be the quietest, least dynamic port Navarion had ever seen. Droves of undead shuffled about their business, hauling up junk, sunken treasure and pearling clams while packing and unpacking cargo from other Forsaken ships. Even amidst all the Forsaken, nobody cared to even look at the short bearded dwarf and tall, long eared, tusked man carrying travel bags next to him. Sore of a thumb as any other, the Steamwheedle Cartel ship floated at the pier, its plain colors rather vibrant in comparison to all the freaking ghost ships of the Forsaken. Nephentha's colorful scales made her visible despite the abomination and obsidian destroyer having a weird sign language conversation in front of her, and her warm smile signaled a much less prickly reception from her than the young man had received from Vegnus.

Two Orcish crew members chatted in their language behind her, and the destroyer politely pulled the abomination out of Navarion and Vegnus' way when it saw they were trying to pass by. Not usually one for physical contact, she accepted his hand for a limp wristedly shake this time, chuckling a bit due to her lack of familiarity with the gesture.

"So you've decided that you aren't too good for Ratchet?" the young naga sea witch asked. She was normally so serious all the time that the sarcastic jab sounded pleasant and welcoming.

As much as he wanted to, the tension in his shoulders that had been creeping up on him from time to time over the past few months prevented him from taking a swipe right back at her. That tension was weariness, he realized, having settled in due to living in uncertainty and borderline homelessness for so long.

"I always knew where home is," he replied, happy that the two of them accepted him back so easily after he'd ditched them. The thought hit him hard, and his guilt bubbled up again. He stepped forward a bit to speak to her without the crew members or even the nearby banshee waiting for nothing at the docks hearing him. "I'm sorry. About earlier, I mean."

Pleasant but contained, Nephentha looked him over demurely for a moment before answering. "It hurt. I won't deny that. But I held out hope that the boy who used to complain about the noise during me and Issa's slumber parties is still in there," she said while wrapping a dainty knuckle against his temple.

"He is, he hasn't left. And he still prefers to keep the noise down during the day." Just as he finished his sentence, the two Orcish crew members and - much to his shock - the banshee boarded the Steamwheedle ship. The bell for last call rang out, and a surprising number of passengers were already on the ship, only coming in to view as Nephentha shifted. "We should probably board," he remarked while ushering her aboard.

Leaving those crowding around the door to the lower decks to push and shove, the trio stood off to the side for a moment. The two orcs waved as they joined the cramped single file line, continuing their conversation as they did so. The entrance ramp was pulled back up by the crew as the undead dockmaster gave them the signal to cast off, and very soon the ship began to drift out, beginning what would be a slow three week voyage.

"Yer parents are going te be so happy that yer back," Vegnus beamed, much more upbeat than he had been before the seriousness on the wagon.

"They're going to be pissed as well," Navarion worried out loud while shoving his belt pouch, pistol, holster and various other loose items into the larger of his two bags. He marveled at how lightly he had been traveling by the end of three years. "I basically did run away from home."

"They'll forgive you, Navarion," Nephentha reminded him, almost laughing at him as she said it. "They'll be mad for a few seconds before they start to smother attention onto you. If they really had a big problem with it, they wouldn't be lamenting about how much they wish you would come home all the time."

"Yer making the right decision, laddie. Look, I've said my piece and ye know my opinion about yer attitude and yer upbringing, but everybody can make amends. If ye want, I'll go up te yer house first and talk te everybody. Nepha here can bring ye on up once I get them all - hey, weiner schnitzels!" Vegnus bolted at the scent of the fresh sausages wafting up from the door leading below to the deck, leaving the younger two members of the trio standing and laughing.

"Get some for us, too!" Nephentha shouted after him. The two childhood friends shared a good laugh and relaxed before she turned to him once more. "I'd better go make sure that our room is secure now that most of the crowd had gone downstairs."

"I'll be right after you, once I can finish sorting my bags," Navarion replied while battling a disagreeable zipper on the medium sized bag. Nephentha had already slithered halfway to the door before waving to catch his attention one last time.

"Navarion?" she said while lingering.

"Yeah?"

She smirked at him for a moment the way she and Issinia always did when they were talking about him behind his back, bringing back memories of foibles and pranks long since past. "You've gotten better."

"Better at what?" he asked in futility as she disappeared into the lower parts of the ship.

Seeing how far they had already sailed from New Southshore, Navarion decided to at least sit on a bench to rest his back until he finished unpacking. An exhaustion he hadn't even noticed before overtook him, and his heart accelerated a bit as he realized that Lordaeron and all the Eastern Kingdoms, the hemisphere of the world where he had done his most significant growing as a person, were fading away into memory. Kalimdor, his true home even if he temporarily forgot, beckoned him. There would be time to share stories of the past three years during the three weeks and then afterward once he got the courage to walk into the door of the family estate, but at that moment, all he wanted to do was watch the continent until he was absolutely certain it had drifted out of view, and he was really going home.

Inside his bag, something clinked. It sounded like glass against metal.

Curious, he pulled the bag open a little more to see the gleam inside. The midday sun broke through the rusty clouds above and allowed just s few days of light to shine down, reflecting off of whatever had clashes inside his bag. Pushing his many pairs of spare socks aside, he found half of the battle of inanimate objects. The metal wedge he'd used to slay the gargoyles that had attacked him and Furball back in the Plaguelands sat on one side of the divide, as dull and heavy as ever.

On the other side sat something he'd long forgotten about. Partially wrapped in the paper he'd bought it in, the half empty bottle of Thalassian wine shimmered, its contents aged and sweet. He held the bottle up in his hand, wondering how he'd forgotten about it.

He looked to his left. He looked to his right. None of the crew members were paying attention.

The cork popped off easily, letting the sweet scent waft out. The fermented grapes tickled his olfactory nerves, reminding him of times around the campfire when on campaigns against enemies long since dead. His throat suddenly felt dry, and when he groaned, his voice sounded raspy and grating.

When his violet-blue reflection on the surface of the bottle took on a forest green tint, the desire he normally felt for alcohol turned to disgust. Tossing the cork overboard first and leaving the bottle open, he chucked the bottle as far as he could, feeling no regret whatsoever.

"No," he said rhetorically, refusing to give in. "This affliction isn't mine to bear."

At long last, Lordaeron dropped out of view over the horizon. After three long years of hard, exciting, laborious, fun, terrifying and exhilarating exploits with a dissolved guild, the Argent Crusade, the cartel and a certain duskbat wandering the undead forests somewhere out there, Navarion Hearthglen finally shouldered his bags and went to get some rest. Real, actual rest; rest where he didn't keep worrying about what he would do for food and shelter a month on. This time, when he returned and found his mother there waiting for him, he had a feeling she wouldn't be the only one to cry. And for once, he didn't feel embarrassed about that.

 **A/N: and so ends the first volume of Taming the Beast, my seventeen chapter attempt at character development. I hope it brought smiles to your face, dear reader, and perhaps provided insights into my fanfictional continuum.**

 **For those interested, there are two transitional pieces on my DeviantArt account taking place between this story and volume two. The first is three chapters and is called "How Thandra Met Zengu" and it takes place a few days after Navarion gets home. He is a supporting character seen through the eyes of a very innocent, naive person, and the fallout from his breakup with Rachel is seen in a different light from the narration here. The second is four chapters and is called "Madrieda's Lament," and it has some adult content in it. It takes place partially before this story and partially right before volume two starts. It isn't necessary to read them to understand this or any other volume, but I thought it would be nice to mention those.**

 **For those wishing to continue, volumes two and three are finished as well. I'm not letting anything slip about volume three for now, but volume two takes place eleven years after this story ends. As one would expect, Navarion has changed as we all do.**

 **Even if you don't continue, I'm thrilled if you made it this far. I love you all! But not in that way.**

 **Maybe a little bit in that way.**

 **Happy reading!**


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